Does it matter for SEO purposes if you use the dashes in your domain name when your first choice is taken? I was going to register a particular domain name but it was already in use. The site has nothing to do with what I wanted for the domain so am wondering if I use the dashes will it make a difference to my ranking?

I'd say using the dashes may be a little better for the search engines, and a little worse for humans who want to type in your url directly.

The Hosting Team is right. I would suggest avoiding dashes if at all possible. The direct SEO benefit would be negligible anyway, as webmasters abused this feature of the search engines' algorithm and its weight in the grand scheme of things had to be scaled down.

The first variant is more preferable.

I don't think I made myself clear when I posted...lol. I know the first is better for people trying to find me but the name I want is a highly targeted keyword. I'm not counting on people finding me directly by typing the url in so much as having my site come up in the top of the SEs. I just wanted to be sure the dashes weren't going to hurt my chances of ranking well for a keyword.

I think that the first one looks better amd much more memorable.

I've always been partial to domains without hyphens if possible. Even if you may not be depending on people typing in your domain name stright, they will probably try anyway. Might as well make it easy on them if you can.

The OP says he's not looking for people to type in the domain, so for the search engines, he should be fine. Certainly no penalty that I'm aware of for having hyphens.

The OP appreciates your answer, The Hosting Team. That's exactly what I was looking to have answered. That being so, I'm not going to worry about that issue when getting a domain that is not relying on type in traffic.

I'd add: if you are looking to have regular visitors comming not from bookmarks: try to do that as good for SE as good for people.

If you can, purchase both.

I much prefer to see websites without a hyphen though.

dashes makes it easier for google to read your keywords, so if your optimising for a keyword in particular then dashes are an excellent idea. However, you have to remember that not many web addresses use dashes and users aren't used to typing dashes to seperate words, so its your choice really

A few years ago we ran a test where I worked. They setup both domain names and then tracked them to the same site. 80% of the hits came from the No Hyphened domain name.... You do the math I guess. The hyphen syndrom came out when every wanted a worded domain name that was already taken or sounded good in the mid 90's

If people come from SE I think that it doesn't matter what domain you have. But if you want to come them back dashes id not really good for that

I think the hyphen in your domain should not make any direct effect in search engine but don't exceed more than one hyphen in case you go for it.