SEO

I am planning on launching a site with a domain name consisting of 2 key words. For arguments sake let's call them "car" and "sales".

The following domain names are available (using the given names):
carsales.net
car-sales.com
car-sales.net

unfortunately carsales.com isn't available.

The question now is whether it would be better to use the car-sales.com domain or carsales.net?

I would appreciate feedback both from an SEO perspective as well as any other relevant perspectives.

From the 3 that you posted, I would go with carsales.net. The reason for this, is because I'm not a big fan of having dashes ect. in a domain name. I guess it goes down to preference.

in order of preference:

no dash
.com

so, i'd probably hunt for a better name given the options.

Something to keep in mind, is that some of the most successful sites' names have next to nothing to do with what they are.

google = a number, not a search engine
yahoo = a slogan, not a search engine/portal
gaia = a mythological god, not an animie keyword
geico = a shorted version of someones last name and company, inothing to do with insurance
edmunds = someones name, not a 'car review' .com
howardforums = cell phone supersite... what does howard have to do with it?
and for good measure...
icanhazcheeseburger = has nothing to do with burgers, but rather cute cat pics.

keep that in mind when chosing a domain name. It doesn't always have to describe what you do...

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Good point Brian. A *cool* or *professional* domain name might also encourage links more than something that looks spammy such as a hyphenated multi-keyword domain.

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Joe Ward / Crawlability Inc.
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Here's a fun link
Web 2.0 Company Name Generator

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Joe Ward / Crawlability Inc.
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Thanks for the advice so far.

I was led to believe that having your primary keywords as your domain name was a *big* plus when it came to SE ranking. Am I mistaken here or is it less important than having a nicename.com?

mobile phone forum - Google Search

howard beats the others with the keyword in the URL.

you decide

LOL nice! I really like it.

Thanks for the example Brian. I have managed to find a good (and not too long) .com to use, so I will go for that.