I wanted a suggestion. If the domain name matching my keywords is not available (Usually it isn't), what should be my alternative? theKeyword1Keyword2 Keyword1-Keyword2 any other suggestions?? I specifically want to know what effect does the hyphen have? Does google recognizes the hyphen as a separator and therefore recognizes keyword1 and keyword2 as separate??? Help appreciated.
Google basically ignored the hyphen. It doesn't help to distinguish the two words as being separate, except to your visitors. I personally like keyword1-keyword2 over thekeyword1keyword2. You can get just as good rankings with either domain name though. With both versions your keywords would be in pretty much all of your links. With thekeyword1keyword2, 'the' might also be included in lots of your links and that dillutes your other keywords a tiny bit. You might submit to directories that want you to use 'the keyword1 keyword2' as your title, making it no longer an exact match to your keyword.
Thanks a lot for your reply! I was really waiting for someone to comment on this. Is there a tool where you checked this up (It sounded like you got a result from some software or online script: "Google basically ignored the hyphen"). Anyways, I'm still a bit confused. For example, apple-computers.com is better than theapplecomputers.com ? Which will be suited if I want google to recognize me for searches such as apple computers? I would like to point out that this is a website for an offline business, so I just need higher google rankings for some very specific keywords. Actually I have 3 different websites with keyword1 keyword2 thing. Google returns: website #1 keywords: 207,000 results website #2 keywords: 3,360,000 results website #3 keywords: 742,000 results for "keyword1 keyword2" searches. I hope I'm not being too vague or stupid here...
Both domain names will be very good. So don't stress out too much over this decision. In my opinion keyword1-keyword2 is slightly better, but it is not a significant advantage. I didn't use any automated tools, but I have dealt with various domain names, including ones that use hyphens. With or without the hyphen, Google still highlights the keywords in your domain name. This shows that Google does recognize the 2 separate keywords. Google will still recognize these keywords even if they are preceded or followed by another word. One advantage of using the word 'the' is that it makes you sound like an authority resource for that topic. It sounds quite official. Meanwhile using the hyphenated domain looks less official. So really both versions have their pros and cons.