Suggestion Needed. Which domain will best suit?

[April004]

Hi,
My client has given me 4 choices to put their site online. They own following 4 domains which contains singular generic term (for example: keyword).

the-keyword.org
a-keyword.com
my-keyword.com
keywordLTD.com (LTD stands for Limited Company)

The site will be a commercial one, specifically a portal offering news updates, tech blogs, online games, entertainment stuff. It will not be branded with the prefix (the,my,a) or with the tld extension like (.com, .org). It will be branded just plain naked as KEYWORD. (example: Aol)

Note: no-hyphenated versions are not available. they are parked. not interested in .net or other TLD or ccTLDs.

In such case, What do you think, which domain name can be the best fit? Which of the above sounds more legit, is memorable?

 

[GiftedDomains]

I would tell them that all the above alternatives are very bad choices and will hurt them long term.
They will lose traffic to those parked sites or other sites and their name will not be memorable. People will not type in those mentioned names.
Their only choice will be to be so good at seo that their site will always be on page one of google (which i assume will not be the case if other good domain names with this keyword are taken, so a lot of competition) or if they pay adwords month after month.

The typical "client" who wants to save the money for a good domain, but will lose more money later.

Alternative solution (if they don't want to buy a good keyword domain): My suggestion would be complete rebrand and use a brandable short .com name which passes the radio test and is not easily misspelled, etc. (without any suffix, hyphen, prefix, etc.), instead of a crap quality hyphenated "a-", "my-" .org, etc. name with the "keyword" in it. The "keyword" will not help much for ranking anyway, since google is shooting out one update after another and that wont help much pretty soon. You can find good available brandable .coms if you search hard enough (let me know if you need help, i am quite good at it)

Something like "Google.com", "Twitter", (just an example of what i mean with brandable short .com)

But if you are forced to use one of the crap choices above, i would take the LTD one (still very bad choice but if you have to chose one...).

 

[lll]

^good call

 

[lincolndsp]

this is one if those cases that the domain does not matter
but go with the one your client would be able to remember himself lol

 

[Arief WN]

Hint #1: Terrible choices. 8-X

They own following 4 domains which contains singular generic term (for example: keyword):
the-keyword.org
a-keyword.com
my-keyword.com
keywordLTD.com

Hint #2: It's a commercial one!

The site will be a commercial one, specifically a portal offering news updates, tech blogs, online games, entertainment stuff.

Hint #3: It will be branded as naked as a single keyword. :cy:

It will not be branded with the prefix (the,my,a) or with the tld extension. It will be branded just plain naked as KEYWORD.

Hint #4: Not interested in .net, but your client pick up the .org? :lala:

not interested in .net or other TLD or ccTLDs.

The Answers:
Because it's a news related business, I'll replace the word 'keyword' with 'news'.
And here is a sorted list from the worst to the best: :imho:
~ the-news.org
~ a-news.com
~ my-news.com
~ newsLTD.com

The same as yours, huh? So I think you already knew the answer. :hi:

 

[Name Trader]

Of the four choices, I'd definitely go with keywordLTD.com because it's a commercial site. But I'd choose the suffix "co", "corp", or "inc" (or even "us" or "usa") if their business was in USA. "ltd" smells like a UK company to me. But I agree with Gifted Domains. You'd be better off going with a 5/6 letter brandable and creating their brand. Google are trying to reduce the importance of keyword domains. But they will never succeed totally with that objective. I don't think you should let your client bully you into using any of those domains, because they have shown their complete lack of judgment, totally, for domain names, with the choices they have given you.

 

[SearchEngineZ]

The site will be a commercial one, specifically a portal offering news updates, tech blogs, online games, entertainment stuff.

The go for keywordNEWS.com, keywordBLOG.com or keywordSTUFF.com or similar. KeywordPORTAL.com?

The domain aspect is so important that they could/should rework the site to suit the name they use - ie make news the focus, but have the other stuff as well.

Calling your site just KEYWORD sounds a bit odd if it is generic, and wrong if it is a brand.

 

[April004]

thanks everyone for the inputs.. I've suggested my client to use either keywordLTD.com or keywordDirect.com

let's see now!

 

[Name Trader]

keyworddirect.com is good, imho

 

[alok897]

If you don't have a choice other than all this four domain name than I will suggest you go with keywordLTD.com