Changing Names Of Sites In A Network

[MisterX]

I have a couple of sites in related niches and am planning to start branding them as a network. The 'problem' is, they all have domain names such as baseball-bats-online or holiday-resorts-reviews...

I think the domain names are ok, but I'm not the audience...If you were in my place, would you change the domain names into something shorter & non-hyphenated and do a 301, or would you keep them as they are ?!

And what would I lose if I chose the 301 solution ?!

*update: first option in the poll is "keep the names", the rest of the text is a copy/paste error and I can't find any "edit poll" options

 

[Charlie]

Can you go for a brandable hub site and keep the existing domains linked from the hub?

 

[MisterX]

Can you go for a brandable hub site and keep the existing domains linked from the hub?

Nice one! That was my initial idea as well.

I'll probably do that, but am wondering if the domain names are too...non-good...now that I've read all the negative comments about hyphens on this board...

 

[JDA]

If you're just going for search engine traffic then I think hyphens are fine. Otherwise I'd think about new domains, especially if the names have more than one hyphen. It's really hard to get word of mouth traffic if the domain is hard to say.

 

[Brandon]

301's are fine to use as well. They will not diminish your rankings.