For online business, getting a good domain name is a major factor for years.For SEO advantage people like to get the keyword rich domains instead of brand name, but even after panda update, is that same scenario?After panda we saw several ranking signal has been updated and the algo(its not a final one ,I do believe so) is running based on several ranking signals and we are seeing the that reflection on SERP. On pre-panda effect we saw that a keyword rich domains are getting a good preference for most competitive keywords even few of them having the value=BIG ZERO to the web or pure spam but after panda update we are seeing less amount of poor quality keyword rich coming(though its not 100% perfect and lots of keyword-rich spam websites got a boost rather than solid information provider ) to search results on serp.Besides good keyword rich domain a good brand valued website coming to the search results.Though Google counts lots of ranking signals like domain authority,page authority,PageRank besides the traditional seo values to fix the ranking, so if you have solid keyword rich domain name which don’t have value to the user and search engine, then it will be trash property for you…besides that if you have brand domain and you are a real information provider,real SEO scorer, then you will be winner…Take a look what Matt Cutts says on that issue: [video=youtube;rAWFv43qubI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAWFv43qubI&feature=player_embedded[/video] So ultimately as we all know, if we are doing website user and search engine friendly and play with real tricks then domain name is not a big deal to some extent where brand name or brand domain does the magic for long run.
To me the question is rather what is the intent of the domain? Is it to be able to grow to be a Twitter or Xinga, or is it a niche domain, very specific to the niche? The examples given were very specifically "brand" driven and not "market" driven. The SEO tactics of each vary very much. If you are branding, you look more at the potential for is to go viral and not so much SEO friendliness. As for niches, I would still stick with Keyword Domains. He did say that there is more value given to them...
Keywords rich domains are okay if you want to hold top positions but for branding domains it takes some time to get it ranked for the search terms. Still there is a hot domain what kind of domains are good... the argument continues.
Good point Andy..but the now after post panda if some know the real tricks, how to establish a brand domain name for SEO prospect, then we can overlook, the domain, name advantage..if we take a close for every competitive/money search terms at serp..how many keyword rich domain get placed with compare to non keyword rich domain?I would say average ratio will be not more than 7:3(non keyword rich:keyword rich domain), its simple if your website is user friendly,having user trust,good content ,strong back links, you will be the winner...