Choosing a good domain name is one of most
important steps in setting up your online
business, but it’s getting harder and harder to
find good names that are still available. You
could use a domain name with hyphens, but is
that really a good idea?
Let’s quickly review what makes a good domain
name. A domain name needs to be relevant, easy
to remember, keyword optimized, and free from
trademark conflicts. It should also be shorter.
Although seven characters or less is ideal, you
may have to settle for a domain name that’s a
little longer.
So you’ve just set up your new barbecue grills
business and now you discover that
barbecuegrills.com is already taken. Should you
consider hyphenating the domain name to
barbecue-grills.com or should you go back to the
drawing board?
The first choice should always be to take the
name without a hyphen. Having established that,
there are some exceptions. Let’s look at
hyphenated domain names and when they are might
be good to use. Domains with hyphens can
sometimes be a good idea if you really want
certain words in your domain name but all the
domains without hyphens are already taken.
Another reason to use a hyphen is when the words
you plan to use are harder to read without the
hyphen. The domain hotellamps.com is harder to
read than hotel-lamps.com. That is not
necessarily a great domain name but it does
serve to illustrate the point that some domains
are easier to read with a hyphen.
You might also consider using hyphens for search
engine optimization. Some people suggest that
using hyphens helps the search engines to
distinguish your keywords better. This may be a
good option for webmasters whose primary goal is
to optimize their sites for traffic from natural
search engine rankings. The only catch here is
that this could change over time since search
engines are constantly adjusting their search
algorithms.
Incidentally, if you decide not to use hyphens
in your domain name, watch out for any
unintended double meanings that might be
embarrassing. To illustrate this point a couple
of fairly suspicious domain names are
therapistfinder.com and molestationnursery.com.
In case you are wondering the latter was
reportedly the domain for the Mole Station
Native Nursery based in New South Wales,
Australia, although it seems, fortunately, to
have moved.
Whatever reason you have for using a hyphen in
your domain name, it would be good to remember
one thing. Some people will forget the hyphen
when they type your domain name. So whenever you
invest in promoting your site, some lucky
webmaster who owns the un-hyphenated version of
your domain is going to get some free traffic,
courtesy of your hard work.
As you can see, there are some situations when
using a hyphen in your domain name may be a good
decision.
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