Dashes in domain names

Hey guys im looking at creating a website and need to aquire a domain name.

I was wondering how much difference

www.blahblahblah.com

would be from

www.blah-blah-blah.com

in terms of blahblahblah being the main keyword to be ranking in google.

since i always prefer the dashes as its easier to read, but dont want it to make me at a disadvatage in terms of people searching for it.

Thanks in advance

 

Depends how you plan on marketing the site. Domains-with-dashes do fine in the search engines but people have a helluva job remembering to put the dashes into the browser if they are typing the domain so for people they aren't so good.

 

Yup Agreed

In relation to the search engines they should both have very similar results.

Go for the domain without the slashes if its available.

Hope this helps

 

the more the dashes, the more spammy it looks.. small and single dashes are OK.. prefer not to choose dashes just in case you want to build a brand.

 

yeah thats what i thought.

it will be mostly marketed by search engine and links.

do people still type in the toolbar?

 

thanks for vquick replies hehe!

i dont think i will be able to get it without the dashes though!

 

also another quick question.

how important is having your keywords in your domain?
as i would prefer to have part of it and have a shorter domain meaning its easier to remember and like you say much less spammy!

 

Names with dashes might be easier on the eye but that is as far as it goes i do not think they have any advantage otherwise.
Whichever option you go for it will not be the difference between success and failure.

 

If it is shorter it can worth.

 

Only issue I have found is typein traffic. Sites with "-" in them tend to not get any type in traffic

 

monged, that's probably because people have a harder time remembering it.

As for the original poster, you want to be careful with how you select your domain name, especially with regard to any potential keywords that will be in it. For example, expertsexchange.com can be taken as either "Experts Exchange" (which it is) or "Expert Sex Change" (which I don't think any of us want anyway). In this case, having a dash separating experts and exchange would be appropriate.

Also sometimes you just can't help but get the dashed version of a domain name, especially one for a proper name (like myself, for instance). For example, let's use myself as a test case. Typing "Dan Schulz" into Google (or any other search engine) will most likely turn up a link to danschulz.com - but wait. That's not me. That guy's in New York, I'm west of Chicago. I also don't want the .net and .org TLDs either (in this case I want the .com, and .name just won't cut it for me). Too bad the same situation exists with danielschulz.com (.net and .org as well). So I had no choice but to settle for (well, you guessed it) the domain name with the dash between "Dan" and "Schulz".

Too bad that site isn't actually up yet though. Perhaps I should stop posting so much and get back to work, eh?

 

haha, cheers for all the comments. think i got jist of it now!

i love the expertsexchange example.

made me laugh!

 

I have tried all combinatins and one (1) hyphen is ok. The sites that had two (2) or more did not do to good.

 

Hi if your struggling to find a .com or .co.uk have a look at .pro available from http://www.encirca.com there's quite a few really good short names available.

The .Pro address is designed to give professionals both a distinctive and secure Internet presence for their Web site, email traffic and confidential transactions.

Ive got a couple of .pro domains and they will rank equally as well on the search engines if optimized correctly ;-)