Also should I metatag NOINDEX the alternative versions, as well as 301-ing them?

If you 301 the alternative "versions," they effectively cease to exist... ie, even if you put up a page and 301ed its url, neither you nor a spider could access it via http. You (and the spider) would be redirected instead to the url that's the destination of the redirect.

So, a robots meta tag on that page would be pointless... and in fact the page itself would be pointless.

It's a concept that took me a while to understand. A 301 redirect occurs at the server level, generally in a "rewrite" command in a file called .htaccess -- It's not a redirect like a meta refresh redirect that happens because of code on a page. There are no pages involved.

Thanks Robert.

I was thinking, have all the unused tld and hyphen variation parked pages point to the chosen domain, and have the 301 in that domain's .htaccess.

In that case, is it not better to have the meta NOINDEX tag in the parked pages?

And what are your thoughts on the point about using the hyphenated domain, but the site design itself not using the hyphen?

I was thinking, have all the unused tld and hyphen variation parked pages point to the chosen domain, and have the 301 in that domain's .htaccess.

In that case, is it not better to have the meta NOINDEX tag in the parked pages?

Angonasec - To repeat... once you do a proper 301, the parked pages will no longer be spidered or retrievable by http. They will effectively vanish. They are not needed; they won't be seen on the web; and there's no point wasting hosting space on them.

What you do, essentially, is to point the A-records of the unused domains to the IP account where you're hosting your main domain, and use mod_rewrite to rewrite requests for these unused domains to your main domain.

There's no point using any hosting space for your unused domains, and no point keeping any page files up online, because both visitors and bots requesting these domains would be directed via DNS to your main domain's server where the requests would be rewritten and go to the main domain.

Again... and I know it's a hard concept at first... adding anything to the parked page files, is pointless, because those pages are no longer part of the query chain.

Angonasec, when you ask the post office to redirect your mail it won't matter if you leave a note on your letterbox for the postman because he's never going to open it with mail for you.
Its the same with a 301 - it never hits the page (and is a heck of a lot more reliable than the PO!)

I'd go with the one-word example, myexample.com
SEs seem to have figured it out and are able to extract the words from it and its much easier to pass 'the phone test' - telling someone what your domain name is over the phone with minimal confusion.
People seem to type .com by default, dammit, so choose that unless its really, really, really non commercial, then go with .org.
:)

Thanks again Robert...

"To repeat... once you do a proper 301, the parked pages will no longer be spidered or retrievable by http. They will effectively vanish."

Here lies the rub. I'm relying on my domain Registrar who hosts the parking page to "do a proper 301", would that alter your advice in any way?

Ledgeroot: Thanks for that very clear analogy for the 301, my concern is my reliance upon my domain Registrar to get it right, and keep it right.

When I asked them to ensure the newly registered domains returned a "true 404" they seemed not to understand what that meant.

Hyphen:
I ask about using the hyphenated version for SE advantage because of this little test in G:

The search term: myexample returns 219 results in serp.
Whereas: my example returns 86 million results in serp.
And: my-example returns 640,000 results in the serp.

This shows quite a distinct difference in the 'SE perception' of the three forms when doing a query. Which is why I lean towards using the hyphenated version.

I know that doing a query doesn't directly equate to algorithm ranking but it is an indication.

Since I've got the opportunity to ponder this before designing the site, I'd prefer to get it right first time.

...my concern is my reliance upon my domain Registrar to get it right, and keep it right.

When I asked them to ensure the newly registered domains returned a "true 404" they seemed not to understand what that meant.

These are hosting issues, not registrar issues... and I'm not even sure I'd rely on a hosting company to get them right. I'd never rely on a registrar to get any technical issues right.

Typically, when a registrar "points" a domain at a site, they're using a 302. I'm not a server expert, by any means... but I can't think of any way of 301ing a domain without having an IP # associated with it.

Again, the easiest way to do this is to point your A-records at your main site's IP and to rewrite it.

I should say that doing all of this requires the kind of hosting account that will permit you to do this... which is to say a dedicated IP account on an Apache server, with a host that allows mod_rewrite and permits sufficient access to the server for you to do what needs to be done.

If you don't know what you're doing you have a steep learning curve ahead of you, and/or you need to hire a professional who can advise you. You also have to find a decent hosting company.

I recommend hanging out in the Apache forum and doing a lot of reading to get some background, and maybe becoming a WebmasterWorld subscriber and looking at discussions about specific hosting companies in the Webhosting Issues and Options forum. (Discussions about specific companies are discouraged in the free area).

My gut feeling is that I should use the my-example.com version for maximum SE benefit, but on the site itself use the myExample.com version for branding.

I concur with leadegroot. I'd go with the one word, unhyphenated version. On the site itself, I recommending separating My Example.com enough physically and by color, capitalization, etc, that you prompt two-word inbound links.

Thank you both.

So to summarize:

Don't trust any domain Registrar to redirect for you.

It looks like the best plan is to get a hosting package where I can host multiple domains and ensure a genuine 301 is in place. (But they'd all have the same, or similar, IPs. Would that be a snare?)

I'd point all the domains at the one server hosting space.

On that server, I'd set up a genuine 301 redirect for both www and non-www for all but the one version that I want indexed.

This will then capture all the type-in traffic from people who forgot the correct URL to use, without exposing any of the alternatives to being indexed by the SEs.

The Hyphen: I'm not convinced that I'll do better in the SEs without it.
The differentiation between the serp results is marked enough for me to favour the hyphenated version.

Is there a way to handle a newly registered domain, so it is not visible on the web?

That would reduce the need to have many of my variants up. So you only need to redirect the hyphenated version of .com