.me vs .com for new personal blog site

[NickDavis]

Hi guys, this is my first ever post on SEOMoz (woo!)

I have researched and I did see someone else ask something similar but I still wasn't clear, so i hope this question is not considered a duplicate and can go on to help other people too

Enough waffle

For various reasons I am moving our company blog to startup a personal blog instead and I have bought a couple of appropriate domain names in a firstname/lastname format for the new blog, basically:

myname.me

and

iammyname.com

My question is, which would you consider 'better', if either, for SEO? (bonus point: are there any other non-SEO factors I should consider?)

Obviously the second name is longer, but it is a .com and I hear all the time that .com is king and .me is waaaay behind

Ultimately I want to rank #1 for my name

If it was your site and your blog and you had my choices which one would you go for?

Many thanks for your help. I'm looking forward to being part of the SEOMoz community and learning a lot from you guys, cheers, Nick

[PracticeFusion]

Hi Nick,

Welcome to the SEOmoz community! It's great to have you :).

I'll give you the short answer, followed by a much longer (and probably more helpful) version.

Short answer: Follow your heart.

Long answer: All things being equal (which will never actually be the case) Google has no preference toward .com or .me. So, that means you ought to take some time to think about the people visiting your site, and the people linking to your site.

Which version is going to have more credibility, be easier to remember, AND be easier to link to? I'm pretty sure the answer to all three of these is the .com domain, although, like I said earlier, follow your heart.

Regardless of what you choose, I suggest securing both domains, and 301 redirecting one to the other.

Hope this helps!

Phil

[NickDavis]

Thanks Phil, really appreciate the quick and helpful answer, I've only been a member a short while (and I feel like I've only just scratched the surface so far) but I've found SEOMoz a huge asset already, cheers! Nick