Is shoving keywords into your domain name really worth it?
Written on January 21, 2008 – 4:39 pm | by Will Paoletto |
What are the costs and benefits of having keyword-rich domain names? Does having the keywords you wish to rank for in the domain name really give you an advantage over your competition? All things being equal, yes. But before you throw down $7.95 on www.hotel-rates-in-bangladesh.com, consider what your goals are with the domain.
High rankings are great; “brandibility” is better. A catchy domain name will increase brand awareness and is worth infinitely more than a domain name picked solely for SEO, especially if it’s difficult to remember and loaded with hyphens and underscores. The ultimate goal should be to have a domain name that is both catchy and filled with your keywords. When this isn’t achievable, you should pick a domain name based on how memorable it is. You can still attain domain names with keywords shoved in them and either redirect them to your primary website or use them to market your main site.
One advantage to having keywords in your domain name is that you don’t have to worry about using targeted anchor text when building links. This can come in handy in your quests to parse links on high PageRank pages that do not allow the use of anchor text, such as Digg comment pages. Links without targeted anchor text always look the most natural to Google, but be forewarned that rapidly link-injecting your keyword-rich domain name across sites like Digg will look unnatural in the eyes of Google and will not help you in any way, shape or form.
While acquiring a domain name for branding purposes reigns supreme, if you have an opportunity to snatch a keyword-rich domain name, do not hesitate to grab it and use it to push the agenda of your primary domain.
Do any of you consistently use this strategy?
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13 Responses to “Is shoving keywords into your domain name really worth it?”
By Web Design DNL on Jan 22, 2008 | Reply
I believe both approaches are fine depending on the site’s goal. If you are not interested in branding but rank for a bunch of keywords, then a keyword stuffed domain will help a lot and it makes sense using one.
Thanks,
By Eric on Jan 23, 2008 | Reply
I’ve been buying domains for years. Some keyword rich, others not. Some with -, _, or no space between words.
My experience shows that keywords can help in SEs, but it can actually hurt to have overly long domains with humans.
I’ve recently started using James Brausch’s Nemeas to help me choose relevant domains that will rank better and have had good success. It does a statistical check against what ranks well and doesn’t rank well to give a potential domain name a score. Works well for me.
Cheers and thanks for the good points on domain names.
Eric
By SEO Solutions on Jan 23, 2008 | Reply
I think that there’d be no difference between domain w/ keywords than those without in SE spiders eyes though we can’t just ignore the fact that there’s a lil bit advantage of using it
By Dave @ Seo Blog on Jan 23, 2008 | Reply
I used both and in terms of ranking, the full-of-keywords-stuffed-domain.com didn’t really help…with a good linking campaign you can get them equal in the serps. If you’re not actively searching for links it will help, like you said.
That being said, at the moment I prefer branding above stuffing for a serious e-commerce biz, especially if you’re doing off line advertising too.
Dave
By Megan on Jan 24, 2008 | Reply
Choosing a domain that includes the primary keyword (if it’s not too long, makes sense to do so, is a part of the business name, etc.) is just good business practice, and yes, Google does favor sites with a keyword in the domain. However, domain keyword stuffing with hyphens or underscores raises HUGE flags in Google. File names however, is a different story, and something that’s ‘warmly’ contested still.
Eric, what you pose is intriguing. Can you offer more insight?
By Will on Jan 24, 2008 | Reply
@Eric: I’ll have to check out Nemeas. Sounds useful.
By Piper on Jan 24, 2008 | Reply
When you can make a good-sounding, keyword-rich domain name without too many dashes, I say go for it. I’ve had plenty of success without doing it, though, especially when you use the keywords in the specific page URLs. It might be easier with the keywords in the domain, but does that matter if no one trusts your site because the domain name is so questionable?
By Feng Shui on Jan 25, 2008 | Reply
Domains with keywords will help a lot for exact matches. Especially with Google. I notice everyday parked and MFA’s ranking above good and clean sites just because of the domain name.
By Betty on Jan 31, 2008 | Reply
How about this: I use my company name as the domain name, I buy 100 keyword-rich domains and I redirect all to the main domain?
By Meer bezoekers on Mar 24, 2008 | Reply
There are even more benefits with a brand name filled with keywords you wish to rank for.
This comes in handy when linkbuilding. Even if your are only allowed to use your brand name as anchor text, your still getting an backlink that is keyword rich.
By TC3 on Mar 28, 2008 | Reply
>> I buy 100 keyword-rich domains and I redirect all to the main domain?
And does that work well?
By Matt on Apr 23, 2008 | Reply
In terms of SEO what would be the best approach:
1. Simply 301 redirecting a key phrase rich domain to the main site domain e.g. red-paint.com to companyname.com
2. Writing some key phrase rich content on red-paint.com that is actually useful (not spammed) and providing a link to companyname.com.
I understand that redirecting a large number of key phrase rich domains to the single company domain isn’t a particularly good idea. Is that true?
Also on a separate issue regarding hyphens would Google recognise the key phrase “red paint” in redpaint.com or just red-paint.com. I was led to believe it was.
Thanks in advance.
By Shell Harris on Apr 25, 2008 | Reply
A simple redirect will pass all link love and page rank. That is almost always best if the original url has similar content to the url you are redirecting to. Don’t try to redirect to a page that hasn’t nothing to do with the old page. Bad SEO, bad!
Redirecting shouldn’t be a tactic in SEO. Use it as it was directed to be used.
Hyphens are better, don’t let anyone tell you different. redpaint is seen as redpaint.