Keyword or brand domain?

[digitman]

Hi.

Ok I'm planning for this website. It'll depend heavily on search engines for its traffic. My question is, should I use keywords in my domain name or use a branded domain name? The branded approach will make my website more user friendly, but at the same time the keyword rich domain name can increase the traffic significantly. What do you guys recommend?

P.S if I purchase 2 domain names,one keyword rich and the other branded, use the logo and other things for the branded, but keep a redirect at the keyword domain name so whenever anyone visits it they are redirected to the branded domain name, and submit the keyword domain at the search engines and use it to get backlinks, will it work? Or will anything else along these lines work?

cheers.

[dcristo]

If your building a site for the search engines go for the keyword domain name.

[digitman]

too bad, I was hoping you would say the branded

[dcristo]

You can still rank very well for a non keyword domain - it just make things a little more difficult.

[smindsrt]

Originally Posted by dcristo

You can still rank very well for a non keyword domain - it just make things a little more difficult.

Agree, it will be more difficult!

I like the non keyword domain myself. From a branding stand point you will stand out better once you are in the top of the search engines. If it is unique enough you will not be confused with your competitors.

[awall19]

if you are not about building long term brand then the keyword rich URL can increase clickthrough rates in both organic and paid results. in some situations ad url might even be nearly as important as the title of the ad.

with a higher clickthrough rate you may not need to rank as high or bid as much to get the same amount of traffic.

[jstcrzyengh]

Right now I have a major keyword as my domain and I get a lot of type in traffic. In fact 70% of it But I have branded my keyword, so I get a bit of both out of it Try to go with both, however if you are brick and mortar going online I saw branded for long term if you are a nice size company. If your company is just you and a buddy go with the keywords.

[digitman]

Originally Posted by jstcrzyengh

Try to go with both

I like the idea of going with both. But how is it going to work? Should I register both a keyword and non keyword domain name, put a redirect to the non keyword domain name on the keyword domain name, to get the type-in traffic, or what?

[dcristo]

I think jstcrzyengh was saying create a branded domain which also includes an important keyword (not 2 different domains)

[jstcrzyengh]

Originally Posted by dcristo

I think jstcrzyengh was saying create a branded domain which also includes an important keyword (not 2 different domains)

Yup.. Like Say your keyword is Dark Blue Widgets, and your domain name is darkbluewidgets.com well on your site represent yourself as Dark Blue widgets.

For example

"Welcome to Dark Blue Widgets"

"Dark Blue widgets specializes in providing you the most complete outlet for blue and dark blue widgets on the internet today"

etc... etc... etc...

However if are a brick and mortar coming online and you are "Harrys widgets", than go with Harrys widgets and build an online brand. It will take you longer and more money, however I fine branded sites have MUCH higher conversions on their traffic. For example a site called "books for cheap" is not going to get the sales conversions visitor for visitor that Amazon is going to get. It's just not going to happen. Of course you build your online brand like Amazon then you get the best of both worlds.

[HeadBuilder]

I tried to take the branded approach more than a year ago and right now I'm slightly regretting it as I believe a keyword approach would have been better at improving position and getting traffic from search engines. I didn't know then...

[mariobox]

My first choice would be to use a mixed branded domain with keywords (e.g. praxiswebdesign.com), if it's not too long. If not, I would purchase both a keyword domain and a branded domain, and would host my site under a keyword domain, using it in all my online promotion efforts, including SEO. I would then '301 redirect' my branded domain to the index page of the keyword domain (under which the site will be hosted), and use that branded domain in all my off-line communications. Both Google and Yahoo! endorse 301 redirects so you can even do some online promotion with your branded domain, since link popularity from your two domains should be consolidated into one.

Good luck.

[realestate]

You can have a brandable and keyword domain at the same time. f.e. my sig, -I was thinking home.info would be a better domain, but home is too competitive-. Solution is to use .info or .biz domains which are still not very expensive.

Number of .org registrations is now less than .info regs. Hope .info will beat .net soon as well.

[Lucky Bastard]

I tend to go for on-topic non-hyphenated keyword domains (see sig) as they also can provide natural type-in traffic. Also they are "brandable".

[dcristo]

A good domain which comes to mind which incorporates a keyword and is brandable is wowdirectory.com

[John Scott]

http://www.v7n.com/keyword-descriptive-domains.php
http://www.v7n.com/keyword-descriptive-domains-2.php