Dumb question I guess...

Not a dumb question at all.
To answer your question, it really depend on the search engine.
There are cases that some of my sites got ranked even without any contents.
However, you will be putting your sites to chances.
SEO is about long term work.
So what if your site is on page one google.
Without good content, your bounce rate will be exceptionally high..
Google will penalize that eventually.

My advice: Don't take shortcut in your Internet marketing career.
You will be awarded with your hard work.

Stay positive and work hard.

You will make it. Cheers.

No question is dumb

It used to be that having the key word in your domain name gave a definite boost in Google. The boost is now less, and is likely to be non-existent quite soon. So, don't worry too much about getting your keywords in the domain name.

The game you might like to consider playing now is to choose a niche you are really interested in, create fantastic content on your site – content that people will really want to share – then aim at getting your traffic not from Google, but from visitor trickles from forums and questions and answers sites - these trickles adding up to bigger and bigger streams over time.

As people visit your site the content will be so brilliant that they will happily share it with their friends on social networks. Bingo!

This is a solid strategy for success which many people are following and it is also quite satisfying because you end up networking with people in a genuine way rather than spending your time trying to fool Google.

Fooling Google is fine if you really know what you are doing, but it does require you keep really up-to-date with things and also it's boring.

So you might prefer the other approach I've talked about. I hope this makes sense.

Best wishes

Malc

Used to be almost the case, but no longer. Google no longer gives automatic preference to exact match domains just on the domain name only. In fact, they will penalize exact match domains with little content. So there's really no advantage in going for an exact match domain any longer. You can rank just the same, given the same content, with a branded domain.

My experience, If there is no competition, your page will come first.

First I'd do some videos on how to make your dog meow, but that's just my humble opinion..

Actually, you would be better off grabbing a domain that grabs interest and can build brand awareness. At least if you intend to keep an audience, not just entice them for a single click.

Because after all, what are:

Ebay
Microsoft
Warrior Forum
Oracle
Adobe
Amazon
Google

How many websites that you think about on a regular basis actually have a name that "means" anything? Not too many.

So MNF recommends that you use "best cat food for dogs" as your domain name...?

Wow.

That's the WORST piece of advice you could possibly follow!

1. Visit adwords.google.com, open the Keyword Tool
2. Enter your keyword and enable "Broad", "Phrase" and "Exact"
3. You'll see that Google reports zero (0) or near-zero results for all these combinations.
4. Now visit google.com, type in your keyword
5. You'll see 63,100,000 results - but all this means is that this many pages contain these 5 words in any order.
6. Now put your keyword in quotes like so: "best cat food for dogs"
7. You'll see only one (1) organic competitor - THIS post on WarriorForum

So, even if your domain is abcdef.com and you write an article called "best cat food for dogs", and even if you do little to no SEO on it - you WILL rank at #1 or #2 for it, given that your URL will be abcdef.com/best-cat-food-for-dogs... In fact, you'll probably rank at #1 because this WF post's title doesn't contain that phrase - it's only found within the content.

This should be a lesson to all who use automated keyword discovery programs like MNF, MarketSamurai, Keyword Elite, Keyword Country and so on. They're only as good as the logic of the person that uses them! I'd recommend you learn the SEOlater method, because it teaches you how to discover REAL keywords. I gave you a fraction of what it is above.

Hope it helps!

What's important is not "will an extremely niche url get ranked" but "how much competition does it have"

If lots of people realise that tartan yoghurt for 3 legged gerbils is the "hot" thing to write about then you will have lots of competition.

If you are the only one writing about it you will find it much easier to rank.