Some people lose sleep over the domain name of their website. Not for branding, ease of use or rememberability (my new word), but for the keywords they think need to be stuffed into their “name”.
The secondary SEO value of domain name keywords aside, these people will sweat the keyword rich name of their website, then completely ignore some very basic formatting rules for the domain name, directory structure, file naming, etc…
Take a look at the following examples:
- TheVeryBestWidgets
- the-very-best-widgets
- the_very_best_widgets
While the human reader can process and understand all three examples, it surprises many “experienced” web professionals that only #2 is seen as multiple words to a search engine.
The real truth is clever SEO motivated domain names simply aren’t very effective. You’re much better off naming your site after the primary branding message, slogan or company name. Far more important is the On-Page SEO you could gain by properly formatting everything else on your website.
I have seen it reported that Google will start judging underscores as word separators, but I-would-recommend-using-dashes. Use them in file names, directory names and when appropriate in the ultra-important page titles.
