To Dash or Not to Dash!

I want to write a blog on how to be a good manager.

Should I use:

http://be-a-good-manager.com

or

http://beagoodmanager.com

Also any ideas on good URLS would be greatly appreciated.

 

Without the dashes is fine, plus it's easier for visitors to remember the site. Search engines will be able to tell what the domain means without the dashes. The other one looks way spammy.

 

good-manager.com was available I registered that one.

 

Bear in mind though that sometimes the search engines will have trouble distinguishing which keywords are being targeted in a domain name. Take "Experts Exchange" for example. Would you expect expertsexchange.com to be targeting "Experts Exchange" or "Expert Sex Change"? (For the record, the official site is www.experts-exchange.com and yes, they are using the dash for precisely this reason.)

 

Either way is fine and doesn't mean much to the engines. I have a website where I used the hyphons and it's in the top 5 placements for strong keywords. Personally though (from a human perspective) I hate the dashes. It's easier to remember non-dashed domains.

 

in late 2006 there was an an algo update, thousands of websites with dashes lost rankings due to the fact that they had an algo ranking advantage before the change, now there is no difference between a domain with our without dashes. if i can i would always go for a domain without dashes because it's more easy to type and more brandable.

 

Excellent example Dan.

 

Much better choice.

Shorter, easier to remember and will help rank for those words.

 

Most people say without but I can tell you from personal experience ONLY on MSN the (-) has helped me a LOT.

 

thanks dan It seems as though the dash is a misleading concept"" I see youre point and I will imply"

do you think that buying the dash and the full url is also better to cover both ends of the domain"""///

 

If I can go without it, I will. Only when I need to explicitly separate keywords or if I'm dealing with a proper noun that I can't get the non-dashed version for will I use one.

 

I also have a domain I need commented on please"" would good-petfood.com be better than goodpetfood.com or good-pet-food.com be better"""

 

I would register all, it doesn't cost much.

 

It can after a while, especially when you have the .com .net and .org of both the dashed and un-dashed versions.

 

no dashes is the way to go.

 

Most of the time. As I said earlier in this thread (and multiple others) there are exceptions to the "rule".