Choosing a Domain - Branding vs SEO

[mmuench]

I'm curious to hear opinions on choosing a domain that is catchy and easy to remember vs. one that contains keywords and may look better to search engines, but might not be as easy to remember.

I guess I'm wondering how much of a benefit you get for having "My-Town-Homes-For-Sale.com" vs. something catchier . . . OK not the best example since this one is both search engine friendly and easy to remember, but lets face it -- someone's already got "My-Town-Homes-For-Sale."

With so many agents domain names are sparse and often times the best one can do is come up with a unique and catchy domain that people will remember.

So how much benefit do keywords give you in the domain name and at what point would it be smarter to pick a catchy branding domain? If you plan on doing a fair amount of ppc advertising anyway does it really matter that much if you have keywords packed into your domain name?

[kensmith]

Go with something easy to remember. Keywords in your domain don't have enough value to offset the value of one customer being able to tell their friend hey check out yoursite.com, or being able to remember your url to go back a second time. At least that would be my opinion.

[GoGetRealEstate]

Get both. It only costs about $9/year for a domain name so you can use a keyword-rich domain name for search engines and virtual marketing. Then get a domain name for real-world marketing (biz cards, flyers, ads, etc.) that is easy to remember such as using your first and last name plus .com or your last name plus "real estate" .com. You can easily forward a domain name to your site and have it active in about 4 to 24 hours.

If you want to run a particular advertising campaign such as for first-time home buyers, you can get a domain name that suits that campaign. You won't get FirstTimeHomeBuyers.com or anything that simple 'cause those names are long gone, but you can probably add hyphens, your name, your city, a neighborhood (if you're farming), etc., like Phoenix-AZ-First-Time-Buyers.com.* Use that for your ad and forward the name to a page on your website you've created specifically for first-time home buyers.

(Using upper and lower case letters makes a domain name easier to read in print.)

[VRI]

Ken hit that one on the head!

[webmaster]

Yup, every times someone posts this question I always tell them to search google for Destin Real Estate - the results speak volumes about the answer.