SEO Question - opinions please
 

I have two useful, very similar domain names for a new site. I'll build the site around one, and redirect (CNAME) the other to it. Name 1 is more lyrical/memorable to stick in a repeat visitor's head (call it "Bob.com," hypothetically), but Name 2 gets about 10 times as many searches on Google for inexplicable reasons I don't care much about (say, "Bobbee.com").

I'm anticipating being able to rank pretty quickly either way; it's an oddball search term with very little competition for page 1. Which one would you build the site around, and which would you CNAME to it?

In other words, if I use Name 1 (Bob.com) as the A record and Name 2 (Bobbee.com) as the CNAME, will Google give the CNAME weight equal to an A name and rank it accordingly in searches for "Bobby," assuming I give equal density to the two terms on the site itself?

And, if the CNAME does not rank as easily as an A record, would you sacrifice repeat visitors (since Bobbee.com gets more searches but is much less likely to stick in someone's head than Bob.com) for a potentially bigger audience in search?

the answer is yes.

use one for main site and one for blog and link them together.

This is honestly your best bet. Google will likely only use one of your domain names, so there's no point in trying to use both (as far as I know.) I've never actually used this technique before, although I have thought about testing the idea of 301 redirects passing EMD love.

Thanks, ~Ray.. That solution hadn't even occurred to me, and it's actually a good fit for the names in question.

JamesGW.. I've gotten a little bump from doing it before, as well as making subdomains with key phrases and redirecting them to different sections of the main site after they get indexed. Depending on how you handle it, it can appear a little grey hat, though; sometimes Google snags it, sometimes they don't. Inbound links are always king, regardless.