Domain Value - Humor me

Now then.

There's an age old argument in the realms of SEO and anyone who knows their stuff will tell you that keyword rich domain names are the dogs bollocks.

But the question is, or I should say, my question is - when do you stop looking at keyword rich domain names over short and easy to remember domains?

After all, type-in-traffic can be just as valuable as organic seo results, so in that respect, take a look at this example :-

Let's say I'm making an e-book on laughing out loud (I'm not). Buying laughing out loud.com is the obvious first choice, but if lol.com is available - isn't there some prudence in acquiring that?

Do those who would say buy both, then it's my experience that multiple domains creates what I call canonical issues with the likes of Google and especially BING...

Actually what I'm trying to say is, would you be willing to 'make do' with filename keywords and sub domain keywords to get a shorter domain name?

If it were blackhat, I'd probably skank the hell out of keyword rich domains and take the keyword advantage, but when it comes to sites you actuallly care about, there is a balance between the two -

or is there? What do you think?

well to get the conversation started

you say 'sites you actually care about' - i think that you are right, a blackhat - OR even white hat - would go for the keyword rich.

if however you CARE about your site, dont care about SEO to generate the money? you might go for some domain name you would be proud of owning

like twitter or squidoo etc.

so i think its a case of .......

buy the domain for its marketing value?
or buy the domain to market the sites value.

I go keyword rich with 99% of domains names for WH & BH. It helps with ranking and there is no research needed by the visitor to figure out what your site is all about. Win/Win.

In your original example I would use LaughOutLoud.com as my content domain and redirect lol.com to it, achieving best of both worlds.

Cheers

agree with aReJay, people will type in lol.com but less will type in laughoutloud.com, however if they are searching in google "lol" it also shows results with "laughing out loud" its known as anti semantic indexing

personally in that case i would go with lol.com... although it depends on what your looking for, with other things i would buy both and have the shorter redirect to the longer

I ALWAYS try to find keyword domains, especially for sites I care about.

I think I'd have to buck the trend and say go with the shorter, more catchy domain - unless you are relying purely on organic traffic. I find returning visitors are higher with shorter domains, especially if you have a catchy name like lol.com