There is some thinking that having the main keywords of your industry in your domain name will help you rank higher in the search engines for that keyword. However, since domain names are being snapped up so quickly it is difficult to find many good, industry-specific keyword domains. As a result, hyphenated domains have become popular, such as online-shoe-store.com and so on.

But does having a hyphenated domain actually help?

There are a few schools of thinking in this. One is that yes, they do help and you should buy them whenever you can. The other is that the benefits of branding (and hence, original non-hyphenated domains) far exceeds the benefits of any keywords you can stuff into your domain name. Case-in-point, look at the domain names of any companies ranking highly for keywords. For instance, a search of the term "home loans" brings up LendingTree.com in the top few results. Hardly what you would call a keyword-stuffed hyphenated domain.

In general, you should probably aim more for unique branding, but if you can find a domain name that is a combination of your industry as well as brand name, and keep the hyphens minimal to non-existent, you will be OK. Your actual site itself is much more important.