Domains with or without the dash?

[MoZarko]

I may be in the wrong place but here it goes...

In your opinion would it be better to use the - between the words in my domain name? Example: BillsBells.com or Bills-Bells.com Appreciate your thouthts on this...

[ADAM Web Design]

There's an argument that can be made for both. Names without the dash are easier for people to remember and for website owners to give to their customers verbally, while ones with the dash can increase search engine rankings (although Google, among others, is now able to extract words from domain names without the dashes being necessary).

Personally though, I prefer the former. Don't bother with dashes. Your search engine ranking increase with dashes, if any, would be negligible and your loss of customers as a result of having a dashes-only domain name would more than counteract that.

The other alternative would be to do as I do with my .com and .ca. I mirror the two domain names, use my .ca for online marketing only, and my .com for offline marketing. The .ca works online because I can gain an advantage in engines that regionalize content, and the .com works offline because people remember it (and if they type the .ca instead by mistake, I got that base covered to). It costs me a whopping $20 extra, but it's worth it.

[Linda Buquet]

If you are mirroring the 2 sites that could be the kiss of death for your search traffic. Plus I'm not sure that dashes in domains help with rankings anyway.

Dashes in a domain name also lower the value if you ever plan to sell it. I would only get dashes in a domain IF I absolutely had to have those exact words in the name and the only way to get it was dashes because the dashless version was already taken. Just my 2 cents.

[ADAM Web Design]

Originally Posted by Catalyst

If you are mirroring the 2 sites that could be the kiss of death for your search traffic. Plus I'm not sure that dashes in domains help with rankings anyway.

This is just my own personal observation, but search engines in general seem to be okay with two domain names if one has a regional TLD. I've got a few clients (as well as myself) who registered domain names with both a .com and a .ca extension and mirrored them, and there hasn't been any negative feedback from the engines or not.

Mind you, I'm not totally sure how this affects SLDs but I'd imagine the logic would be similar. Two would be okay, but anything beyond it would likely raise a red flag.

[MoZarko]

The deal is aka: BillsBells.com or Bills-Bells.com Example: Bills means nothing but Bells do. It sounds like going without the dash is better by what I understand with the searchengines (they can pick out the keyword in the domain. I'm in no big hurry on registering my domain as of now, but want to do what is best.
I really appreciate your opinions...Thanks
If any others would like to throw their 2cents in go for it. I'm here to learn more.

[xmx]

My opinion is that sometimes it is easier to read
the composed name if there are dashes in it.

That way the different keywords are immediately
recognised by the reader.

Many persons think that dashes lower the value of
the domain name.
I don't totally agree with them but is of course
my personal thought.