I decided to register domain name with two words but when I looked into who is dir it was already taken by someone else and it was for sale, when I asked price of that domain they told me $48,000 ...I was shocked! this domain is for sale by branded company. I can not buy for this value I would like to have same domain name, now I have two choices FirstwordSecondword.net or Firstword-Secondword.com I will be creating couple of subdomains on this so which domain you suggest I should go for? Thanks!
I had to make a choice like this a year ago. I choose the "Firstword-Secondword" option going aganist a parked .com domain with the "FirstwordSecondword". I just did a search at MSN and Google using Firstword Secondword with no "" or + signs added to the search. My site was #1 on MSN and on page 3 at Google. In my case most people would type in the same thing I did they would never type FirstwordSecondword as one big string. I have added some orginal content to the site and that is page that was listed both places. The hyphen will not hurt you SE wise. It is just harder to explain to some one over the phone or radio. Hope this helps you.
I agree. All of my sites use the hyphen in place of the straight up keyword whenever possible, and all of my Squidoo lenses with the hyphen do much better ranking-wise than those without. I think it might be because Google looks at the hyphen and knows where to break the word, which would count towards your SERP.
Colbyt, Jordan Matthews: Thanks a lot for the reply! I would like to use this domain for Blogging so I will be creating some subdomain also. Most of the time I will be advertising/marketing my blog online. some people says its better to go for .NET over hypenated .COM domain....because it represents as a Network! but some people says if I go for .NET domain name I will be loosing lot of traffic to .COM domain...so dont know which one to choose...pls help! Subdomain.FirstwordSecondword.NET Subdoman.Firstword-Secondword.COM which one will be better? my first word is 7 letter and second word is 5 letter....subdomains will have around 7 letters. something like this... aaaaaaa.bbbbbbbCcccc.NET or aaaaaaa.bbbbbbb-Ccccc.COM