While this is seemingly simple and stupid, it is important to the webmaster laying down the foundation for the site. Through personal accounts and a little research, the one thing I’ve noticed is that the singular “-forum” version gets far more type-ins than “-forums.” This becomes more apparent over a large spread of time, such as a full 1-year spread.

In fact, in every instance where I own and park both “-forum” and “-forums” versions of a domain name, the singular has greatly exceeded the number of type-ins. It was also true when doing a simple Google Keyword Tool search for “[noun] forum” vs “[noun] forums.”

I suppose this gets tricky when you own only one version of these domains, and someone else already has the other. While a singular and plural can both rank equally for the same term with the right amount of SEO, the moral if this story is all about “type-ins.” If you own the lesser typed in plural forum, you’ll have to accept the fact that your singular-version adversary will get a lot of your type-ins throughout time. Is it better to keep using your plural form, or just find a new domain name altogether? Or, how about a subdomain? Honestly, I’d stick with the plural form and build up on it.

These are the little picky, finicky things that cross your mind before that vital period of time before the site goes up. Worrying about ‘that other guy’ who owns the other version of your domain, the amount of benefit he’ll get from your site in the distant future, and the possibility of that guy doing something stupid like using the domain against you by attempting trademark infringement, is a constant fear of the type-A personality. Overall, getting a site up and running is the first step most people don’t (or won’t!) take – including that other guy. So, get it up, get it running and don’t worry about the specifics.

But, if you have the singular “-forum” domain name for a generic term, you’ve got a nice little advantage.

When it comes down to thinking up a name for a new website, some people opt to name their project or business with at least one (if not two) keywords that they want to be associated with. Many businesses have benefited from this…for instance: Pear Analytics, Search Engine Journal, iPhone, Pizza Hut, etc. Perhaps these entities haven’t purposely included their main keyword for SEO (certainly not Pizza Hut, since it was around before the public internet era), but it sure helps these businesses rank for those terms for one main reason: anyone who references them as a company will automatically be including that much-desired keyword in a backlink that points to their site.

Naming Your Company After Your Domain Works

Here’s another example: WordPress theme designer “PremiumThemes.net” has its focal keyword as its own actual name. Therefore, it’s assured that he’ll naturally get tons of links pointing to his site with the advantageous keyword “premium themes,” which happens to be a major search term for people who look for WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and other website themes that have a price tag on them. As a result, the site is always within the top couple results for a Google search of “premium themes” (which enjoys about 40,500 searches per month according to Google Keyword Tool, at the time this article was written!) According to Backlink Watch, the site has well over 12,000 backlinks with a majority of them including that 2-keyword term, either with or without a space in the middle.

Think about it: the most grueling part about launching a site is associating it with a keyword. While you’ll have to mindlessly build links to your own site, you’re also hoping that others will throw you an occasional link here and there along the way. There’s nothing more that you’ll want during this initial launch than keyword-loaded links that include the search terms you’ll want to rank for, because people will be forced to give you backlinks for that keyword, since it’s also your company name…catch my drift?

This is why exact keyword domains will NEVER decrease in demand. Many debate the hypothesis which states that having keywords in your actual domain name is a factor in helping you rank for those words in search engines. This may or may not be true, but one thing is for sure, it guarantees that you’ll get backlinks with those keywords.