[Web Address] Hyphen or not?

My preference depends on what the somewords is. some-words can look better than somewords and vice versa. Think I too would edge towards the somewords.com though, just because it tends to look cleaner.

In terms of SEO, the hyphen is considered a separator/space (at least in Google's eyes). So if you're looking at targeting both 'some' and 'words', some-words.com might offer a small advantage over the non-hyphenated version. Though use the hypen in moderation, as too many may well flag up suspect activity on the domain.
 
Augmented said:
My preference depends on what the somewords is. some-words can look better than somewords and vice versa. Think I too would edge towards the somewords.com though, just because it tends to look cleaner.

In terms of SEO, the hyphen is considered a separator/space (at least in Google's eyes). So if you're looking at targeting both 'some' and 'words', some-words.com might offer a small advantage over the non-hyphenated version. Though use the hypen in moderation, as too many may well flag up suspect activity on the domain.
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In URLs, doesn't it just match substrings as “words”? Á la:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=wikipe&btnG=Search
 
Augmented, that's an interesting view on the hyphens flagging up potential suspect activity. It seems to be contradictory to other items i have seen on the use of hyphens in relation to SEO. Does your recommendation to use hyphens in moderation apply to the whole URL or just the domain name itself?

What i'd read was that the likes of Google will often be able to make out the keywords in an URL, but sometimes will be unable to and therefore it is potentially good to hyphenate keywords in the URL.

For example,

somedomain.com/efl-english-as-a-foreign-language.html

rather than something like...

somedomain.com/eflenglishasaforeignlanguage.html

What i'm wondering is how to determine where to draw the line? Pretty important to me right now as i'm just about to put a site live that makes possible over-use of hyphens in the URL.... What concentration of such URL's throughout a site would be considered reasonable?
 
I've no idea on SEO but from a web users perspective, I'd say definitely go without a hyphen. It's easier to remember, easier to tell the URL of your website to someone and easier for anyone guessing the domain to guess correctly (eg if I'm looking for the site of Joe's Pie shop I'd most likely take a guess at the domain joespies.com rather than joes-pies.com).
 
Lovemonk said:
Augmented, that's an interesting view on the hyphens flagging up potential suspect activity. It seems to be contradictory to other items i have seen on the use of hyphens in relation to SEO. Does your recommendation to use hyphens in moderation apply to the whole URL or just the domain name itself?
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It's going by http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/
Matt Cutts (Google) said:
To answer a common question, Google doesn’t algorithmically penalize for dashes in the url. Of course I can only speak for Google, not other search engines. And bear in mind that if your domain looks like www.buy-cheap-viagra-online-while-consolidating-your-debt-so-you-can-play-texas-holdem-while-watching-porn.com, that may still attract attention for other reasons.
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Ahh, yeh, i'd read that article while googling last night in light of your comments in this thread. It would seem to refer to the domain itself, and not the URL? Or, does anyone think there is no difference and both will potentially be penalised?
 
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