Domain Name Logistics

[dnrp8]

Hi all,
Wanted to get some advice on this - I've built an idea for a blog around a name that I want to use, except the .com & .net have already been registered and the holder does not want to sell.

I've thought of registering the name with hypens instead, (it's two words so only a single hypen would be needed) however I remember from a while back that this was one of the original no-no's of domain name registrations. Is this still the case? Some articles / sites say it is; others say having the TLD is more important.

Can anyone offer a definitive answer?
Cheers

[cazion]

Hi
choosing a domain name for your business is very hard to talk about, as the search engines do not look only at the domain name as criteria to pick it up in results, now most search engine use such logarithm (special calculation) to define which website to pick up for the user, the domain name has great factor to be picked up but is not 100%.
the most famous search engine which is Google look up at other criteria as website optimization, meta tags, heads, links .... It become more harder now to cheat or trick the Google search engine (people sue to purchase domain name just to trick search engine using black hat seo)
If the domain name contains dash can be also acceptable because some of search engine read the dash and underscoll as a space.
If you can’t get the domain name you are looking for, just try to get the similar or the closer one to it, and will work.
Focus more about website optimization and other factors rather than only domain name.

Good Luck

[dnrp8]

Thanks for your comments Cazion, much appreciated. I ended up purchasing the hypenated .com & .net names and also the non-hypenated version for the localised domain name.
Cheers

[cazion]

Great
Good luck in your business