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Web application naming question. Big brand name, or SEO friendly?

7 points by Kanbab ↗ HN
(Most SEO friendly names, are pretty human friendly as well, and I know that search-term-in-domain is becoming ever less effective for ranking)

So I am working on a business/product and am not sure what direction it will take once I undertake my lean mean customer development process. I would like to have a domain name now, however, that I could use once I launch, which would hopefully boosted by pre-launch marketing activities done from this site.

How do you know when your domain name should be highly specific like: bingocardcreator.com VS. www.teach-nology.com (teach-nology.com ranks #4 for "bingo card creator")

5 comments

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fear91
It depends how serious you are on the project. If you expect it to be something big and really successful, go with branding name. If it's a small side-project, go with the SEO domain name.
itsprofitbaron
FWIW in September 2012, Google launched an EMD (Exact Match Domain) update which Matt Cutts announced on Twitter [1] to combat "search-term-in-domain" results ranking higher than other websites because their domain matched the search term.

I personally believe that you should go for a name which is easy to pronounce/spell and if you can target your audience in the name than its perfect.

[1] https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/251784203597910016

iamchrisle
I would agree with this.

Google changes all the time. I would ALWAYS place more emphasis on a great brand name, and great product. At the end of the day, your brand should outlast Google's algorithm changes. You don't want to be on the losing side of an algorithm change.

sidrt
Agree. Pick a name that best reflects what you'd like your customers to perceive your brand as, and not based on SEO considerations. If you make it work for humans, the machines will follow ;)
gopi
Why not both?. I like compound or blended names with one part of the name subtly telling what is about and the other part make it a brand (ex Photobucket, Pinterest etc)

Its easy to trademark such names too.