Maybe I should have added - we already have both the brand and the generic domain names and this is an industry with many well-established brands already competing.

if we focus on building the brand; the question that I then have is what is the best use to make of the generic domain when link-building?

The reality is on a real google search today for 'kitchen knives', kitchenknives.com is the #1 result, and it's the same for many other products where the generic term for SEO ranks higher than brand names. Surely this is because of the anchor text/ domain name match rather than because 'kitchenknives.com' is such an amazing brand?

So are you guys saying, assuming slycers.com is going to be my brand name, to focus on that entirely and not worry about keyword-rich backlink building to the generic kitchen-knives.com domain name, even though I would expect most traffic to come through a google search for 'kitchen knives'? I would also add that the generic search term (kitchen knives in this example) is incredibly competitive.

sorry, but that doesn't actually answer my question!

I am currently building a retail e-commerce site in a highly competitive area. We have a generic brand name; e.g. kitchen-knives.com and we also have another brand name, e.g. 'slycers.com'

We have 3 options that I can see and I would like to know which is better for SEO.

1. Build generic.com as a blog site. Link to brand.com
2. 301 redirect from generic.com to brand.com. Use generic.com as anchor text in all links
3. 301 redirect from brand.com to generic.com  . Use generic.com as anchor text in all links

Also, if there are other better options, then I would appreciate the input!

thanks