Keywords and dashes in Domain name, good or bad?

Let's say I have 3 keywords: apple, banana, pear

Domain name applebananapear has been taken. Not available.

So, if I register a domain in this format apple-banana-pear, with dashes in between, is this not good for SEO?

 

People are divided on this. Personally I dont think it really matters as the search engines ignore the hyphens, you can see examples sometimes where you see top ranking sites which have hyphens in between the kws

 

In my opinion, the domain name will be long and not a good one for seo. you should try other one.

 

Totally agree. Though the domain name would be long but it will give you a good chance to rank for all those 3 keywords, provided your site is well optimized.

 

Personally I dont think it matters for the search engines. The domain name can be with hyphens also. But when it comes to rememberability (people typing in domain name) they will type in applebananapear and not apple-banana-pear unless they remember the other website with previous experience...

 

Yes I agree. Nowadays many people are using hyphen domain names even companies are using it and they are on the top at SERPs so I think it doesn't matter at all.

 

As long as you have the keywords in the domain the dashes hardly matters, but make sure to get the keywords to be placed before any other words on the domain or url, this helps

 

You have your domain name as applebananapear or apple-banana-pear, with dashes in between, it doesn't matter for SEO.

 

I hope this is true because I just got ahold of an awesome .com domain that contains two very popular words seperated by one dash!

 

I unfortunately didn’t know things like you listed and I made my domain with an extremely long name. It’s actually bothering me now and I’m not sure if I should create a new domain and move all my content. But then I’d lose all of those sites linking to me..

 

It doesn't matter as long as SEO goes. But it will harder to remember. Try another TLD without dashes if it's available.

 

I personally believe that putting dashes in your name is not bad for SEO. I personally have three websites that I have started myself that all have dashes in the names and have all got to the first page of Google.

 

Thank you all for the helpful replies.

 

Its good to have - in name for higher ranking for specific keyword but difficult to remember , So i would recommend short and easy to remember domain name

 

The seo wont affect it big. but i would recommend domain without dashes. As a guy said here it would be hard for users to enter dashes and they wont remember too.

 

If u have not any other keyword then hypen domain will be good for SEO purpose, but bad for returning visitors.

 

Indeed, it will be harder to remember with dashes, but I believe you are aiming for Search Engine traffic not Direct Traffic , right ?

 

It is good for seo. Infact, I believe that having dashes could even be better for seo, because the keywords are differentiated.

 

Read about what Matt Cutts has to say about dashes in U.R.L.'s :

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/

 

I had to make a new site as my first one was without dashes. I also made the mistake of using prepositions.
The words "up" "to"and "the" of course didn't count. I hade keywords on url but whenever I look for competitors, on google first page are all like that, so I had to change my site and did a new one with 4 keywords and hypens.

Hypens are better for reading. Also not hypening might create other words that you might not be aware. Maybe not in your language. There is a famous case: an italian company called Sofa Art (making sofas of course). They joined their words into sofart.
What would google read SOFA ART or SO FART.
Don't laugh.... hypens are important. Yes most of the best sites are two words combined: travelocity, tripadvisor and so on. That is also because they are easy to digit.