Domain Names containing dashes

Is it a wise strategy to purchase domain names with dashes to build an affiliate portal?

For instance we've purchased cheap-airline.com and vegas-travel-deals.com.

Using ThemeZoom 3.0 Lite: Est Natural CPD  > Phrase Match CPD > Phrase Match CPC (max)

vegas travel deals.com  45,041 > 3,786 > $2.58
cheap-airline.com   18,272> 1,253 > $2.07

Most of these types of keyword sites, appear to have links to various affiliate programs. Is this strategy going to work as landing page with affiliate links or should the site be built out with siloed and themed with a hierarchy of information and articles?


 

Hey.

This is an age old question.  With no disrespect intended it is not critically important.

Search Engines will never understand your web page.  They are not in the business of understanding.
They are in the business of classification and catgorization of data.
While many think the domain name is a crucial variable in this formula, my contention is that it is not
that significant.

If it was what is a Yahoo, MSN or Google about?

Here is a quickie crash course on SEO.

Two words are vital to understanding SEO.
Those words are classification and connections.

Here is a simple exercise that will show you how important classification is:

On your computer I want you to search for the document with the following title.
Don't search the internet, search your computer.

"I am a search engine genius."

Let your computer search and see what it comes up with.
This might take a while.

Now open up NOTEPAD and save a file with the following
name:  "I am a search engine genius."

Repeat the same search.

What happened here?  In the first instance the search feature built into your computer
could not find a document titled "I am a search engine genius."  In the second instance since you
named the document by that exact title it found it instantly.

This is exactly what you need to do online related to you website.
Your title of your web pages are the most important search feature for your website.
Search engines will classify your pages by the titles you give them

How important is this...

That blue link you click on at google is the title tage of that web page.

If you focus on good classification of your web pages you are halfway home.

[SOFTWARESAVER]

Harald is correct in what he says its not 'that' important ie dash domains or no dash domains.

Your mention of Themezoom and silo is important depending on what your looking for I feel.

A basic site with a few pages of good content, good title and image tags, key worded content + 1 or 2 links going out to authority sites and your privacy page etc is going to stand up well in google adwords.
Will be ok in the search but don't expect anything special yes.

But a site with even Themezooms 'basic' silo and content as per Themezooms specs is going to do very well in google adwords and well in google search.
If you then take the action of building your Themezoomed site up from additional money key words you find in your PPC then your seo will become a significant
part down the track (as you know)

So seems to me if your looking long term then do the Themezoom silo approach.
Short term and no concerns regards seo wanting to do just plain simple ppc then a simple site as suggested would do well and get a good quality score.

(just a qualifier here....do not do any site structures before first testing out the ppc side of things and making sure you have good potential for clicks, purchases and
no killer competition to handle.  You will find the answer to all those important questions by running a quick PPC test.
If its looking good and shows potential then by all means go for it regard site structure, seo or what ever you want to do.
Just don't spend too much time on a project if you have not at least tested it out first and done some research!

Are the two posts here of help?