Hi all, I found a decent domain name in .net with and without a dash. The only issue i'm having is selecting which one to use. The dilema is that i'm targetting two keywords in the domain name. The only problem is, the first keyword can be confused by the search engines as two names. I'll make an example. gemstonestore.com. So, the first keyword I may want to target is gemstone but google can pick it up as two keywords "gem" and "stone". To differentiate, i'm thinking about grabbing the dash instead of the non dash like gemstone-store.com. I believe the search engines will be able to know what keywords to "help" when gathering results. What do you think?
The search engines are smart enough to see the keyword 'gemstone' in gemstonestore.com They will still give you a boost for that keyword because it would be in all of your backlinks. It doesn't matter whether you use a dash in your domain or not. That does not help the search engine find the keywords. Personally I would probably go for the domain without the dash as it would be easier for customers to remember.
I agree with the poster above me. SE's can probably tell the difference. I've heard some people claim that dashes are treated as spammy, but from my own observation they can do quite well.