Domain taken. Which is better? Using hypens or longer domain.

[Dave_Whitty]

I am wanting to set up an e commerce site and the domain name that I want is taken. I am considering using a domain that has the main keyword I want to rank for as the domain. I have heard chatter of google penalizing these types of sites and it seems that it hasn't come about. This is something that I would like to test out. So if "electricscooters.com" is taken, should I use "electric-scooters.com" or "electricscooters4less.com" Just wondering if the hyphenated or the longer domain will rank higher. The site won't be spammy at all, I will carry a few different companies that offer similar products. So for this case, I would only sell scooters from a few different manufacturers. Feedback would be appreciated!

[zigojacko]

Either specified example is fine and one won't rank better than the other based on the domain on it's own.

Is your actual company called Electric Scooters 4 Less though? I would recommend a branded domain name in an ideal world, not having the keywords in your domain name is not going to hinder the rankability of the pages providing the content is quality.

[Dave_Whitty]

No it's not called Electric Scooter 4 Less. I don't even sell scooters, that was just an example. I just know of similar companies that have these generic keyword names that rank well. I understand the domain name isn't the sole contributor to that because their content is unique, quality, and uses different types of media. They also are consistently acquiring good links. I'm just checking to see what can give me an initial boost to try to be competitive for that keyword phrase initially. Thanks for the response!

[ClaireH-184886]

As far as i know it is fine to use electric-scooters.com, some seo experts have said in articles that it can actually be better but i am not sure on that.

[PeterM22]

I think one hyphen in a domain is not too bad, especially if its a .com...it only looks really bad whens its buy-cheap-viagra-online.info. It's very unlikely to affect ranking.