How Do You Balance Factors In Domain Selection?

[Gyi]

Recently, there has been considerable discussion and debate about the value of choosing keyword-rich and exact-match domains. In a recent webmaster Q&A, Matt Cutts seems to suggest that google is planning on "turning down the dial" on keyword domain signals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAWFv43qubI

How will these changes (if at all) impact your advice to clients on domain selection?

[TellThemEverything]

General rule of thumb; make your decisons based on the customer, not the bots.

A descriptive domain name is always a good thing if you're telling someone what you do in the elevator. It helps with SEO too, if your keyword is in it. Just don't go spammy - not www.blue-green-red-widget-widgets.com

Or you can go for memorable; flickr.com, etc.

The best of course is when you manage to do both, but given the choice I would always try for my premium keyword.com!

[Guest]

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[NickPateman81]

Reducing the weighting towards exact match domains was always going to be inevitable given that it has been so incredibly overpowered for organic ranking. However I can't foresee an instance where an exact match domain would not be telling of the relevance of that domain's content. i.e. I'm sure Google & Bing will always take into account domain keywords when calculating rank.

Personally I think Mr Cutts sums it up incredibly well. It's branding vs SEO. And, as an SEO, I want to build a website that is getting as much organic traffic as possible and therefore I will always purchase EMDs. It's a serious question of long term goals and how you want to develop the website. Anyway, if you go with an EMD in the first instance there's no harm in 301ing to the new domain if you change your mind in the future!

[Gyi]

"However I can't foresee an instance where an exact match domain would not be telling of the relevance of that domain's content."

To me, this is at the core of the issue. If the domain contains keywords relevant to the subject-matter of the site, it is undeniable that it provides signal information about the site.

In a link vacuum, searchengine.com provides more information than dogpile.com for the search "search engine".

[mattotoole]

This has always been my way of looking at it.  But it's easy enough for Google to tone this down too.  A lot of mass keyword domain strategies do result in low quality or outright spammy sites.