Are Domain Name Hyphens Really Necessary Any More?

Question - I'm ready to register my domain name (supplied but not shown) and I'd like you to clarify something.

After discussing this with you I'm still confused as to why you stress the lack of hyphens. Not a major point I know, and a lot of sites don't have them, but I always thought it was preferable on 3 or more words, just to make it easier to read.

Answer - Your domain name looks fine, it should be a great name especially if you eventually promote it offline.

Using hyphens makes it harder for people to put your domain name in manually so it's often best to leave them off.

You can get the name easier to read by capitalizing the first letters of each word if you want to.

For example http://www.HobbyAndLifestyle.com looks the same to a search engine as http://www.hobbyandlifestyle.com and is easier to read for your offline visitors as well.

However, make sure you use the lower case version when you actually register your domain to avoid any confusion.

The domain name isn't as important for SE's these days as oncoming links and your other on-page factors.

You can build pages for the 'unusual', 'unique' and 'special' versions or extensions of your main keyword and they will rank just as well if everything's set up right as the pages with those words in the domain name.

Don't worry about the low numbers for the keyword version 'original' it's not a problem, it's just one word.

You're on the right track, get that domain registered and build some pages. You'll adjust things as you go along.