WHat domain name to choose for local businesses

Most companies would prefer their trade name .. Amazon,eBay,John Deere etc.
You can add keywords to the site to attract folks once the domain is up and running.

You can do the name of the company but if you are doing some SEO work i suggest you buy both.

I use Google Keyword Tool to see which KW has the highest number of searches.

The I see which of these domains is available

Then I check out the competion for these keywords and pick one that has high (but not necessarily the highest) monthly searches BUt also one that has Low (but not necessarily the Lowest) competition.

If GKT does not have any results for "city +keyword" I just seach for keyword only and figure that it will be similar for city/town + keyword.

I would tell you to think link this. What we do for online marketing is completely different than what the people you are trying to get to the moving site are searching for. This about what they would put into Google.....bet they put this in "movers+<insert city name>" or similar...right???

Use that to guide you. That will help you organically rank. So, I think it might be better to do say AthensGAMovers.com or some similar keywords for URL. That is what I would input into Google if I needed a mover in Athens Georgia.

Just wanted to help put it in perspective on how the majority of people search for things.

No reason not to grab a couple of other URL's with the company name, or similar keywords in it and redirect. Pretty cheap and just send them all to the same site. This helps if someone mentioned the name of the company you are doing the site for and then they tried to search for them.

Don't forget a Google Places listing too.....MUCHO important these days.

Hope that helps.

Yea you can redirect the main site to the keyword domains, in my opinion that's the best way to go about it or you can even create a landing page for the keyword domains for SEO purposes and directing them to the main domain

you can use the company's trade name plus some few words.

I'm no SEO guy, but I understand that keyword rich domain names help with rankings. However, also consider that offline businesses might also be using the domain name in print, radio, tv, etc. For these purposes, a short, easy to remember name is probably better to capture type-in traffic.

thanks guys for all your help. this helps me out a lot!