The only good reason I can think of for using hyphens is when you want to ensure that you're keywords don't get confused when placed next to each other.  penisland.com or expertsexchange.com are infamous examples domains that suffer from this problem!

Here's a post about how Bing views keywords:

The Meta Keywords Tag Lives At Bing & Why Only Spammers Should Use It

So, over-stuffing your keywords isn't totally ignored and can cause a penalty on Bing.

Meta keywords were so abused in the past that they could no longer be used to accurately tell what the page was about. As a relevance/ranking signal it became worthless.

Great point Ann. Obviously a lot depends on the motive when it comes to link building and in the real world you can't just measure your return on investment by the number of links...

I suspect that building connections between your own guest posts also increases the chances that people will want to find out more about what you have to say than if they just read one post somewhere.

Pitty you can't see the path people have travelled to arrive on your site beyond the immediate referrer.

User Generated content can work amazingly well, even just being able to entice people to leave great comments on your articles can pretty awesome.

You do have some challenges through:

1. Cultivating a community.

Lots of website/webmasters have the thought - "Wouldn't it be good if I had a forum" and after getting things up and running are surprised to find that nobody's participating and the forums are dead.

It's a bit like organising a party, getting in the cheese and wine only, to find you've over estimated your popularity and end up drinking alone with the brie.

Do you have an audience in mind. What are their goals and needs. Would they expect to satisfy those goals by coming to you?

I think you'll find it a little harder than you imaging to "create a good community".

2. Differentiating yourself from others

If you're "just like the next guy" then why should anyone use your Q&A? How can you stand apart and offer something different and valuable to everyone else? There's little point just trying to copy someone else - they're already off and running and you're likely to be playing catch-up.

Unless you have something unique and valuable to offer (and be honest about this!). What's your value proposition. What's in it for your audience?

One tactic would be to cater to a very specific niche. One that is super-targetted to your own business offerings. This has pros and cons of course. The smaller the niche, the smaller the potential income. However, you'll be better able to specialise and become relevant to that niche.

3. Moderating and feeding

User-generated content sounds fantastic - just sit back and watch all this awesome content being created before your very eyes.

It's not quite as easy as that. Moderating and maintaining your community will take time and effort. So you'll need to make sure you have the resources available and the desire to do so. Managing people can be unpredictable and difficult so don't consider user generated content in any form as a quick win.

As well as moderating, you need to keep your audience focused and engaged. It's not going to be quick either.

All this can take you away from free earning work, and your business goals so do keep the opportunity cost in mind.

Hi Robert, That's my understanding too. (Google doesn't think hyphens = spam).

I do think that there's  a SERP CTR/searcher perception issue that you need to think about when choosing your exact match domain name.

I'm sure that the more words you have and the more hyphens between then will mean that you domain will appear less authorative and more "spammy" to searchers. (Those who actually notice the domain name!)

Sorry to hear you wasted 30 mins!

Think about your visitors! Displaying your NAP isn't just for local SEO. Is it likely, that many of the visits you get to the site are people trying to find out the physical location? Having both the locations displayed on their landing page might just answer their question.

If you've got separate landing pages for each location with good local content, parking instructions, directions opening times etc, then add a link to those too. Those pages are for people too!

I agree, I really don't think it matters that much.

It's nice to have a URL that you can easily say out loud, on the phone etc, and it's handy if you can keep it short enough to fit on your business card!