I am working on a new informational site centered around a certain keyword. For the sake of example, I will use 'red tomatoes'. Since red-tomatoes.com and redtomatoes.com are both taken, should I opt for redtomatoes-info.com, redtomatoes-web.com, redtomatoes-online.com (etc, etc) or is a .net (red-tomatoes.net) better? Or should I go for joetomato.com as a kind of branding (IMHO informational sites dont need branding, but still)? I would like to avoid .info and .biz for obvious reasons. Does your domain matter at all? Do keyword-loaded domain names still get a boost?
It doesn't make too much difference. While it's better to get the keywords in your domain name in the format of keyword-keyword.com it won't put you at too much of a disadvantage not to have this.
What Matt said. If you cannot pot both keywords in the name (because you think it will be too long) then make up some word that has "tomato" in and concentrate on branding and links.
As you said that your site is informational site, so IMHO it will be better to go with.info domain. Generally .info TLD is used for informational sites. "redtomatoes.info" will be proper.
First, stay with a .com or .net The others have negatives. If the keyword is red tomatoes, then you would use 'redtomatoes' or 'red-tomatoes'. Now since they are taken, you must add a sufix or prefix to it. Like 'riperedtomatoes' or 'rip-red-tomatoes' or 'redtomatoespack' or 'red-tomatoes-pack' In a competitive SEO environment, the url keyword will be helpful, not much but it could be a tie breaker. Just keep the prefix or sufix short. And choose a sufix before prefix.