Happy Thanksgiving to all you turkey lovers. May this be a great kickoff to your holiday season. LET THE SHOPPING BEGIN and the meaning of Christmas not escape you.

When making the choice for your Domain Name you may see the possiblity to use your major keyword(s). But is it already used in various forms? Does the URL wording need to contain something specific to your business? Maybe a combination of keywords that can’t be placed together well?

Hyphens have been used with interesting variations - and interesting results as far as SEO is concerned. The best domain name needs to have relevancy in it’s keywords but free of name trademark problems with other websites. It should also be shorter and easier to remeber if possible. Ideally seven characters or less is what you want.

Let’s say you just created a business that you want to name FrozenSeaFoods.com, but you see that name is taken. Should you use a hyphen, as such: Frozen-SeaFoods.com or should you make major name changes?

Well, your best choice is to take a name with no hyphen in it. But there are some exceptions to this situation. Here are some situations when a hyphen could be a good choice. Domain URLs with a hyphen can be a good idea if you need particular words in your domain but all domains without hyphens are bought.

Another good reason to use a hyphen is if your words appear difficult to read without a hyphen. The domain musiccave.com is harder to read than music-cave.com . Not a perfect name but it makes an example that a URL or domain should be as readable as possible.

Some people suggest using hyphens to help search engines to see your keywords better, especially good if the primary goal is SEO. But search engines can adjust to different reading and ranking styles, so it’s not a concrete rule.

Also, you should realize that some people will not remember to type the hyphen when they look for your website.

Arthur Hyphen Mr. Cool,
Arthur Browning