[Soliloquy]

So I had an idea for a local Christmas site, and of course all the good domain names are already taken (but have crappy advertising instead of real content). I narrowed it down to Christmas-in-mycity.com and ChristmasPartofcity.com, and ended up buying the hyphenated one. It contains the keywords I want, while the other "Christmas partofcity" probably wouldn't be searched nearly as often.

This is not the first time I've had this problem; I've often had to choose between the hyphenated domain with all the nice keywords and the non-hyphenated one with not so great keywords. Is there any way to figure out which is better?

[PoetJC]

Hmmm- actually I think "to hyphen or not to hyphen" is more of a user preference - I don't think a hyphen is a negative or positive as far as SEO - It's generally the content, the backlinks & the traffic which makes a domain popular.

I actually have a hyphenated domain http://Poetry-Defined.com - because http://PoetryDefined.com was taken - Case-in-point - my domain has a GooglePR2 - the other is ZERO --- The thing about hyphenated domains is that it's simply EASIER to literally say "Poetry defined dot com" rather than "Poetry hyphen defined dot com"

Anyway - hope this helps

Jacquii.

[seovb]

Depends on how many hyphens. Hyphen'd domains are usually associated with spammers and take more work, but only after so many hyphens.

1-2 hyphen's won't be a problem, 3-4 is probably borderline, and 5 or more will probably get your site sandboxed until it can be reviewed

ex: christmas-tree.com good
ex: christmas-tree-is-green-and-i-love-them.com bad

[lafsunlmtd]

i think it really depends on what you are doing it for. if you are just looking to get a domain to drive traffic, sometimes dashes are better for search engines and when people see them in search engine results they have the keywords in them so they are more likely to be clicked.

on the other hand if you are trying to build a site that will really last that people are going to be coming back to, it is often wise to avoid the dashes especially where they url you are competing against is doing the same thing. ie adminfusion.com vs admin-fusion.com people are bound to mistype and it will lead to nothing but lost traffic. hope this helps

[rockinaway]

I, personally, hate hyphens in domains. I don't mind one, but I just think it also reduces the number of visits you get because people aren't used to typing hyphens. I would avoid the hyphens full stop.

[Dulce]

i dont think it matters seo-wise, i never believed the theories regarding that, but it will probably hurt type ins.

[Moelman]

Was a dot net available of the domain without hyphens? I personally would rather use a dot net than a dot com with hyphens.