When there is no physical business that you are trying to give an online presence to and you are creating a pure cyberspace entity, should you go for a brandable or keyword based domain name? Are brandable domains only the province of medium to large sized online sites? Of course we all want to have the traffic of google, yahoo, myspace, etc. But if we're realistically not putting in the development effort to have a web destination of that magnitude, are keyword based domain names better? I've googled for this and I can't seem to get a sense of a consensus (if you have any good links please post them). One concern I have is that any current boost a keyword domain may give you might go away in the future as search engines work to eliminate spam. What do you think?
There is no consensus because there isnt a concrete answer. Both methods work for creating a business. Both sides can cite arguments, examples, studies, etc. Hotels.com Cars.com CreditCards.com FreeCreditReport.com vs Zappos.com eBay.com Google.com Yahoo.com list on each side is huge, really, if youre serious about building a business you need to factor what you can do rather than what million dollar advertising campaigns/domains can do. What is your budget? Can you afford a category killer domain that will give you a steady stream of customers instantly or do you need a cheap domain and buying PPC traffic and ads to drive customers? There are so many variables and you're constrained by your limits really not what works best for these big guys. The quick advantage/disadvantages: keyword - type in traffic (if its not getting this, its probably not worth its price), easy recall without branding, generally can be spelled properly, instant user/customer base brandable - generally cheaper, less/no type ins, can use TM protection,
Thanks for your thoughtful response. My strategy is basically to think of topics I am somewhat interested in and build a site around that. Let's say my topic is (hypothetical): love in New York City. And suppose I've determined that the phrase "love in new york city" has the highest search volume so possible domains could be: loveinnewyorkcity.com nylove.com newyorkhearts.com newyorkvenus.com bigappleromance.com Despite that my "brandable" examples are pretty lame, what would you go for in this situation? Also I thought I read something about having too many keywords in the domain like you want 1 or 2 but not 3. What do you think?
I found this comment on (http://www.internet-based-business-mastery.com/choosing-a-web-address-for-a-new-site) which I found interesting and relevant:
Branding a site takes considerable effort, time & $$$$. Having a keyword domain makes it worth a lot more & easier to get traffic & build up a better brand to sell down the track. Eg. I would rather own & develop Cars.com over ThisIsMyCar.com
I'm not sure if I understand what you were trying to get at with this example. Is ThisIsMyCar.com supposed to be a branded domain or a keyword domain? I gather that you are advocating keyword domains but to me ThisIsMyCar.com is a keyword domain or am I missing something?
I might go with big apple romance off that list, has a nice ring, while semi brandable still i can guess what is there and what site might offer. i would also register a few of the others and redirect them (domains in all honesty - at least fresh regs - are a pretty damn cheap investment).
When creating a keyword domain are you more susceptible to having competing sites with very similar names? Example: You register car.com and someone else registers cars.com You register miamibeachantfarms.com and someone else registers miamibeachantfarming.com Do you feel brandable names really eliminate this? The impression I get is that people think brandable names protect from this effect. Why is that? Is it because when you have a brandable name and someone copies it, it's obvious? Example: youtube.com vs youtubes.com
One thing that hasn't been mentioned that I think is an advantage for brandable domain names is that you can more easily expand or even change the focus or direction of your site. If you register fordmustangtalk.com You're site is pretty much going to be about mustangs. While if you register some nonsense neologism you can make the site about anything you want.
but if i see some 'nonsense neologism' i have no idea what im getting into and may simply ignore it. i see fordmustangtalk.com and that is what im looking for, ill click there in a heartbeat.
That's a good point, and I was going to bring it up too. The nice thing about keyword domains is they tell you exactly what you're getting yourself into (assuming the content matches the domain name). So does this swing the pendulum more into the keyword territory unless you have an advertising budget or a remarkable website? I guess the ideal is the brandable-keyword combination, something that conveys what your site is about and yet is still unique somehow. I'm so ready to go on a few domains but I'm really held up by this.
Can you start off with a keyword domain, and then if the site starts to look like it will be big enough to justify branding (or competition requires market differentiation) change to a branded domain and 301 redirect the old domain?
you can always rename... google was originally called backrub. though depending on what level youre at, may juts make sense to make the generic name your brand (hotels.com)
keywords in domain is good and is for SEO purpose but a good pronouncible name-a combination of 2 words like FinanceBuzz.In makes sense to me for business sites.
I think that is a good idea considering the fact that it can be a little difficult to take off with a brandable domain name. Getting the exact keyword domain name would give a great advantage because the keyword search will be treated as a navigational query. So, you can take off with a keyword domain name and create something good and then later if you really want to create a brand identity, you can always shift to a new name.