Our website URL is branded but we also own a great keyword URL. To this point we have just redirected the URL. Any thoughts, pros or cons on creating a second site with some keyword rich content and getting this second domain ranked? Will google see this is a black hat?
I would advise that you use keywords in the domain name. It will help your SEO results IF the domain name is relevant to the content of the site. I create niche product site for larger companies all the time. We create a content site for a niche item with all the bells and whistle included. These sites have the product name as the domain name and is used to attract visitors for this product. Nothing black hat about it. You provide valuable content and build your SEO plan around the product. The businesses logo and branding of the site are included.
No Google won't see building a second website using UNIQUE keyword content as blackhat it's perfectly fine. On the new website just put a little blurb or AD about what your other website offers and use a URL with the nofollow attribute.
So just stay away from duplicate content. I assume it would have to be more than a landing page with just content on that page. We already have a product section on our branded site so it would be time and money as well as future maintenance to have a lot of content on a keyword URL domain.