When purchasing a domain name, would you rather have a non-.com, or a dash in the name?

For example, would you choose

keywordforum.net

or

keyword-forum.com

?

Thanks for your advice.

depends on what I'm using it for.

If both the domains are available then I'd choose keywordforum.net because Hyphen(s) in a domain are bad from the branding point of view and for word of mouth publicity. Hyphenated domains provide very minimal or no advantage over the non-hyphenated domains. Search engine can read and parse keywords in the non-hyphenated domain in the same way as they would incase of a domains with hyphens.

Suppose the site name is keywordforum.net and you are interested in keyword-forum.com then in this case you will loose a lot of type in traffic to the non-hyphented version of the same name.

Thanks for the advice.

Just to clarify, the .com non-hyphenated domain is taken.

are you planning on building a real site that people might actually use or just MFA crap?

in the latter case, do everyone a favor and put several hyphens in there.

Originally Posted by chovy

are you planning on building a real site that people might actually use or just MFA crap?

in the latter case, do everyone a favor and put several hyphens in there.

This would be a real content website and forums.

when in doubt about these kinds of things, think "word-of-mouth". When I'm confessing to my priest that I've been spending too much time on Keyword Forum and not enough time in prayer, he's going to type in keywordforum.com. If I refer to it as Keyword Forum dot net, he's going to type in keywordforum.net. If I say Keyword Dash Forum dot net, he's going to forget the whole thing by the time I'm done saying my 5 hail mary's.

Originally Posted by handsome rob

when in doubt about these kinds of things, think "word-of-mouth". When I'm confessing to my priest that I've been spending too much time on Keyword Forum and not enough time in prayer, he's going to type in keywordforum.com. If I refer to it as Keyword Forum dot net, he's going to type in keywordforum.net. If I say Keyword Dash Forum dot net, he's going to forget the whole thing by the time I'm done saying my 5 hail mary's.

hehe, good way to put it. I'll take the .net after all your advice.

It depends on if you're relying on word of mouth or not. I prefer .com's over .anything else anyday of the week. If it's not a .com I don't trust it as much.

I apologize in advance if anyone above me already said this but I don't have time to read the replies now. Here is my knowledge.

I did notice someone said this while I was scanning the page. The hyphenated one is bad for branding, doesn't look like a professional page. However, as far as I know that is better for SEO because search engines don't see separate keywords as easy if there isn't a hyphen.

Often people recommend in this case to buy both. Work on your seo to target the hyphenated one so that it shows up higher rankings easily, and on your page put the non hyphenated so your users will be able to remember it easily and it would look more professional.

Originally Posted by dprundle

It depends on if you're relying on word of mouth or not. I prefer .com's over .anything else anyday of the week. If it's not a .com I don't trust it as much.

this is a pretty dated view....these days, the hyphenated domain is a huge turnoff.

Originally Posted by johniman7

I apologize in advance if anyone above me already said this but I don't have time to read the replies now. Here is my knowledge.

I did notice someone said this while I was scanning the page. The hyphenated one is bad for branding, doesn't look like a professional page. However, as far as I know that is better for SEO because search engines don't see separate keywords as easy if there isn't a hyphen.

Often people recommend in this case to buy both. Work on your seo to target the hyphenated one so that it shows up higher rankings easily, and on your page put the non hyphenated so your users will be able to remember it easily and it would look more professional.

Thanks for the advice. That's a great idea

Why not try to come up a better domain?

If you think this one is best, than I would go with the .net, it seems better.

Originally Posted by Adam

Why not try to come up a better domain?

If you think this one is best, than I would go with the .net, it seems better.

That is also an option for me, but I had wondered this question before so was just curious what others thought.