Dash or No Dash?

Registering a new URL

[genco]

I am helping set up a new smaller web site for a law firm and they want the domain to reflect keywords. I am looking for feedback on using or not using dash's to separate key words. Should our domain use the keywords and run them all together or should we separate the keywords with a hyphen?
Thanks.

[kevinpate]

my own take on your question is:
absotively, posilutely, hands down easy: no dashes
:)

[Romeo]

Domain names are cheap.
So I would get both domains, declare the non-dashed one as the main site, and put a 301 redirect from the dashed name to the main site.
An easy early way to avoid later competition from a potential competitor ...

Regards,
R.

[genco]

Is your opinion based on search engine optimization strategies or that you don't like dashes in URL's? I agree on not using dashes in a domain that will be promoted as the org's web presence, but I didn't add that this domain is strictly for search engine optimization. It will not be used as the firm's web site.

[gpmgroup]

Its a lot of hassle if somebody else registers the other one. Is it worth $10 to take the risk?

[robho]

this domain is strictly for search engine optimization

As others have said, get both at this stage in case things change.

Having said that, for pure SEO dashes seem to win for me.

I have many pairs of domains (with/without dashes) that have similar auto-generated parked content and are linked to from exactly the same place. The dashed version gets *much* more traffic in nearly every case.

One reason for the difference could be the repetition of the domain name within the auto-generated content (dashed version separated better), rather than just the domain name, but whatever the reason the difference is very marked.

[MediaHound]

If you type the string of characters into Google without any spaces or dashes, click to do a search, is it short and sweet enough for Google to parse and return a Did You Mean... result?

[kc9bka]

NO DASH

[gethan]

Get both - use the no dash. The seo returns on the domain name with a dash seem to be extremely slight.

[oneguy]

I think it partially depends on whether it's going to potentially be yyyy-yyyyy.com or yyyyyyyyyy-yyyyyyyyyyy-yyyyyyyyyyyy.com.

I might not want to run 3 or 4 large words together without dashes.

[imstillatwork]

I say up to one dash, no more.

[polanski]

In my opinion, I would get both variations of the domain name and use the "dashed" one as the main site. I have seen loads of traffic from my "dashed" versions of the names I control

[1Lit]

Get the one with the dash. Don't waste your $10 registering the non-dash version.

Then I'll register the domain name without the dash and redirect the traffic to my site.

[ckarg]

I would get both, but ensure that you focus SEO on one version. You don't want to cut the number of inbound iinks because some go to foobar and some to foo-bar.

Also, where the no-dash version is ambiguous, you'll want dashes: e.g. computerace. Is it computer-ace or compute-race?

[maherphil]

Get both, but also watch out for how words combine together to form new words...

bikesexpo.com ...spells 'sex' inside
bikes-expo.com...doesn't

The first domain can setoff adult filters and get you lumped together with porn. Prolly not good for business ;)