Saw a post over on digitalpoint talking about people buying domains with keywords in the phrase... what's everyones experience with this? I see a handful of sights in my niche that do rank well that are some of the good keywords, however apparently it still takes link building, keyword placement, all the usual SEO stuff, to rank well. But it seems to be a good boost! There are some sites that do not come up at all too that are keyword phrase domains, so I assume these have not been doing good SEO work. What i really wonder is how much weight this carries in SEO, and the difference between having a .com vs a .net, and also having a - in between your words (i.e. floridafishing.com vs. florida-fishing.com).
It's not so much for SEO but the ease of remembering the domain name. From a searchers standpoint a keyword name carries more weight. The best name in the world won't change your SEO rank alone. Most people will think dot com and remember it better than .net or .info. Dot orgs imply more authority but dot com is what people type more often. Using a hyphen creates a memory problem and mistakes for many people. Remember the old K.I.S.S., keep it simple for the stupid.
Getting a domain with your keywords in it won't work magic or anything like that, but it does help a little. In a small and uncompetitive niche they can be very useful for rankings, but the larger the niche is the less it will help.
Agreed, yes it is obviously helpful to remember, and I guess also if you want to use the keywords for the actual name of your site, and in turn use those keywords for links and such, people won't think it's just keyword spamming for directory submission and such. And also if people like your content and blindly link to you they will likely use the words too.
syxx: having a - in between your words (i.e. floridafishing.com vs. florida-fishing.com). In your example I would buy BOTH names and point them to one site. It looks better with the hyphen, more readable, but people still forget to type it. They will remember the name better since it visually separates the words.
Keywords in the domain that make an exact or partial match to the terms used in a search query, can only be a plus. It is generally believed that relative keywords in the domain are a positive signal to the search engines. keep the domain name as short and simple as possible and I always avoid hyphens.
Everything else being even, an exact match keyword phrase in your domain does make a difference on your SEO efforts, but you do indeed need to be doing the 'everything else' part as well. Keyword rich domains are part of any good on-page SEO basics, and coupled with strong varied back linking you are on your way to high rankings. I'm not a fan of hyphens either, i prefer adding a suffix to the end if i can't get the exact phrase.
Having your most important keywords in the front of your domain name can be helpful. Important, but not critical. Just do a search for any keyword phrase that interests you. You'll probably find several domains with that phrase in the top 10. For example, consider "horse training" #1: horsetraining.org #6: horsetrainingvideos.com #8: horsetraininghub.com An interesting question is, what happened to horsetraining.com? It's for sale. So, look for domains with your keyword phrase at the front. Check for unused or new domains, domains for sale, and expired domains.
There is no doubt that keywords in the domain name are valuable, but it is not as important as the other factors; not by a long shot. You can have a domain with absolutely no keywords in the title, and if it has good content and a lot of high quality links, it will rank regardless. Of course, there are some cases where for less competitive keywords, just having the keywords in the domain is enough to rank on page 1. I've seen sites with 0 inbound links near the #1 spot just because of age and name.
In my experience, if you can get the EXACT keyword you want to target in the SERPS in a .com, and you know how to get your site indexed quickly properly, you should instantly be ranked in the Top 30 for that keyword, even with little or no content on the site. .net and .org variations usually require more content and links to rank. But I do have many, many Number 1's with .org/.net and even local extensions like .org.nz / .net.au etc. -Logan
I do this all the time and it is super easy to rank this way. This is definitely my major strategy in achieving #1 rankings on Google.
Having a keyword rich domain name does help slighty in increasing search engine position, but the most important factor of seo is building those precious one way backlinks. The more quality backlinks you have pointing towards your website, the better it will position and rank in google. So to any newbies reading this post right now, building backlinks is the key to google ranking success. Make sure you dont build them too fast though or google will penalise you seriously for it.
