Keyword domain or brandable one?

It is a huge dilemma every time.

Do you go for keyword rich and easy to rank, or the brandable memorable one? Not to mention that all the good keyword domains are taken, so going that route means you have to settle with dashes or secondary keywords.

And it gets better, because there is no single answer! Sure, going the keyword route will make your life easier, but will it make your site’s career easy? Not really. For a long term well known site, branding is everything. But when starting out, seo is everything! How can anyone win?

There is no single answer as I said, and it all depends on your skills as well as the market. But there are some pointers I can tell you.

First of all, dont use your name. Sure John Chow might have an easy memorable name, but chances are that you dont have one. And if you think your name is easy to remember, talk to someone from the other side of the world and try to get him to learn it. You will fail, trust me.

Secondly, it depends on the site. If you are making a software site for example, which will focus on ranking rather than type ins, going the keyword route is the only way. Even 13downloads.info will work for that, it doesnt matter. You just want that main juicy keyword in there. If you are making a different kind of site, maybe you should consider going for the brand.

Bear in mind though, that going for the brandable domain has its negatives. First of all, you need to do branding! I know, it seems obvious, but many people omit that. You need to do branding, and I assume that you lack the millions corporations spend to build one. So, what can you do?

Building a brand by yourself is possible, but it will be hard. Be prepared. You need to put your brand in everything, and I mean everything you do. Emails, forum accounts, secondary sites, submissions etc. Building a brand by yourself can take up to 2 years. You can speed up the process, by creating something useful to give away, and that ties in with your brand.

Most large well known sites became famous like that. It was a single post, or guide, or how to, or widget, or script that got them up there in the top. There is no recipe for that, no one can tell you “make this and you will get famous”, but you have to try. And if you do actually try, get ready to be surprised.

Summing this up, there is no right or wrong in this decision. Not at first actually. My ideology is to take keyword rich domains for the quick and dirty “want to rank fast in a killer market” projects, and brandable for the sites that I am proud to show my mommy