It is common knowledge that a webpage will be higher ranked if the domain name of the website contains well optimized keywords pertaining to the subject. Most people assume that the domain name should be one long uninterrupted word in order to be most effective and that hyphens are to be avoided at all costs, but this is not true.

Hyphens help the human eye read a series of words better, and search engines work with this fact. In fact, hyphens do not affect your page rank or your search engine optimization and are perfectly fine to use.

However, hyphens may have a slight effect when it comes to “type in” traffic. This type of traffic, such as when a person types in the search in a toolbar, may give slightly more credence to domain names without hyphens than ones that do.

Regardless of whether or not hyphens are used, the important thing to keep in perspective is that domain names are not the most important aspect to web success. Make sure to have relevant content, find a good niche, use optimized keywords, and have links coming into your website from other sources!

One question we frequently receive concerns using brand names in a website’s domain names. Suppose you find a fantastic niche and the best keywords involve a brand name. This is a tricky situation to find yourself in because while you want the best possible keywords you don’t actually own the rights to the brand name.

In short, it’s generally not a good idea to use a copyrighted or trademarked brand name in your domain name. The company that owns the rights to the brand name probably won’t sue, but they can absolutely force you to surrender the domain name. Either way, it’s a hassle best avoided.

There are others ways to maximize a niche concerning a brand name without using the brand name in your domain name. It is nice to have a domain name closely aligned to your product and well optimized, but in the grand scheme of things domain names have little impact on the success of the website. It is more important to have links coming into your website from other sources (www.ezinearticles.com for example) have the keyword, and variations of the keyword, in the anchor text. 

You could eve have a more generic domain name (such as www.abcelectronics.com for example) and then have a page that is named after the brand name (www.abcelectronics.com/brandnamekeyword.html ) with content on that page about the brand name you are going after. Search engines will still be able to find your website easily, and this is an easy and safe alternative because if there is a problem, you can simply change the name of the page.