I know this is a similar question to ones that have been asked before. But in my experience some domains will show up with your keyphrase with little to NO optimization at all. If i can get domains with for example health-niche.com or healthniche.com which would you get? including if they were .info's I have little experience with using hyphenated domains but i'm thinking without the hyphens they will show up faster with less seo. Any input?
without the hyphen, most people would sear for yourdomain.com first rather than your-domain.com its easier to remember without the hyphen
Always avoid hypens for the simple reason that people almost never "type in" a hyphenated domain, it's a huge hassle. Go short, go descriptive. And here is a great tip I can give you when marketing a multi work domain. CapitolizeTheKeywords.com
Assuming both domains are new (no website currently): I would get the .com non-hyphenated domain. In my opinion from a SEO standpoint I would stick non-hyphenated because the upside of having a non-hyphenated domain (type in traffic, etc...) is several times greater than the marginal value you may receive in some search engines by spacing out keywords (with a hyphen). I would get the non-hyphenated .com and focus more of your time and effort on quality content development and getting links from high quality relevant sites. Those two factors are much more important than keywords in your domain name. I have never tested out the speed of domain names being indexed. In my experience, incoming links would be more of a factor in determining how fast the new site is initially indexed compared to the format of the domain name.
thanks for all your responses i think I will buy both as they're cheap and experiment with what the search engines like.