Brandable domains vs. keyword-rich domains
ProBlogger posted a question:
When choosing domain names do you get a keyword rich or more brandable name?
Basically, the days you can have a domain which is both nice and also actually has the a keyword or two in it are long gone.
But look at the real world: most brands, branded for people, do not contain any ‘keyword’ reference. Nissan doesn’t have the word ‘Car’ in it (although General Motors has ‘motor’) Ikea doesn’t have ‘furniture’ and even Coca-Cola doesn’t have ‘sugary brown soft drink’ in it.
On the other hand, in the web media, search engines give a strong weight to domain names containing keywords, so allot of sites want keyword-rich domains.
Look at your target traffic:
If you’re building another generic site, and you plan on basing most of your traffic on one-time incoming links from search engines, then yes, get yourself a keyword rich domain. But if you plan on actually building a site that will become a brand, and people will come back and recommend your site to friends, then a more brnadable domain is better.
Of course, if you’re not going to be the next web 2.1 thing, keep the name fairly simple, because you need to be really good for people to struggle with a crazy domain such as del.icio.us.