Selecting a domain name – SEO or Recall Brand value?

While selecting a domain name, what is your preference ? Would you go for a perfect keyword match or a brand name that has a better recall value?

Before jumping into a conclusion, let’s see what are the options we have.

Of course, there is no thumb rule that says one is better than the other but, there might be a few factors that you want to evaluate before deciding on a domain name.

1. Site content
   A lot depends on what your content type is. Do you have a content rich website, or a community website where pages just fly by? When the content itself is the USP of your webpage then, the domain name takes a backseat, and you can get away SEO’ing the pages. In such cases the domain name is pretty much irrelevant assuming that your pages are itself strong in SEO and helps you develop that authority you need.
2. Site volume
   How much content do you think will go in? Will you be having a few thousand content rich pages by next year? In that case, you don’t have to worry if you didn’t get a perfect keyword match.
3. Scalability
   Are you planning only for a 10 page website that will have static pages and nearly no content update ?  You might want to get a closer keyword match because the real estate you get to do SEO are limited, so cling on to every possible smaller details you can find, and that might include a domain with perfect keyword match.
4. Promotion
   If you have a long term strategy with strong promotions and advertising campaigns in mind, then the content pages would take care of relevancy patterns with Google and you have the luxury of going for a funky domain name. Because, you are going to build on the brand positioning and recall value with the promotions, and as the traffic builds up, you don’t have to completely rely on the search engines.
5. Website type
   That’s a very general term to use right ? But yes, what category does your site belong to, is it a one page marketing site, a forum based community, a CMS based site, a blog or a static page site – really matters while selecting a domain name. If it’s a one page marketing site, then there is no other go but to select awkwardly long keyword match domain names, if it’s larger community based sites, then you have more luxury of going for “web 2.0” type domain names,

There are probably more pointers out there to help you select a domain name, more complicated and finer details, but generally, I think that with the new algo changes on Google, keyword match domain names are certainly not favored as they had been favored earlier. So it isn’t something you should put on the top of the list while buying a domain name. No definitely not !

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