Keywords in the domain

[Garch]

Does having the keywords in the domain name for your niche help you much in terms of ranking on Google?

There seems to be some evidence that having the complete key phrase does help quite a bit.

[James Schramko]

it can help but is not essential.

Google common keywords and see the results. Not all the top listings have the keyword in them.

Where is does help is the backlinks automatically have a keyword in them...

[kindsvater]

In my experience the lower the "PR" of the competition for the term you are trying to rank for, the more important having the keyword in the domain becomes.

[Ross Dalangin]

It's one of the many factors. Content is crucial. When you have good content, it follows. Be sure you have unique contents and backlinks to same niche.

[JustaWizard]

Someone else just asked the same question - here's my reply:

I've heard it both ways, with the majority saying yes, it matters... now check this out:

I've had a domain name HealWithYourMind.com that I've basically done NOTHING about except have a crappy web page or two on the 'net....

...I've done ABSOLUTELY ZERO seo on this site, I mean less than zero seo.... in fact only a couple of days ago I decided to change the title tag but ONLY because I took down my HTML site and installed WordPress....

...BUT HERE'S THE THING:
go type into google the words heal with your mind - no quotes, just those words - I just did, and my site comes up #3 out of 33,500,000 results!!!!

So the evidence speaks for itself - again, I have almost no pages to that site, there are no backlinks, I've basically neglected this site since day 1....

... and yet it ranks very, very highly for the keyword phrase that is the domain name.

So, I'm not going to give you an opinion, the facts speak for themselves, take a look and see!

Hope that helps!

Best,
David

[James Schramko]

Originally Posted by JustaWizard

Someone else just asked the same question - here's my reply:

I've heard it both ways, with the majority saying yes, it matters... now check this out:

I've had a domain name HealWithYourMind.com that I've basically done NOTHING about except have a crappy web page or two on the 'net....

...I've done ABSOLUTELY ZERO seo on this site, I mean less than zero seo.... in fact only a couple of days ago I decided to change the title tag but ONLY because I took down my HTML site and installed WordPress....

...BUT HERE'S THE THING:
go type into google the words heal with your mind - no quotes, just those words - I just did, and my site comes up #3 out of 33,500,000 results!!!!

So the evidence speaks for itself - again, I have almost no pages to that site, there are no backlinks, I've basically neglected this site since day 1....

... and yet it ranks very, very highly for the keyword phrase that is the domain name.

So, I'm not going to give you an opinion, the facts speak for themselves, take a look and see!

Hope that helps!

Best,
David

David you do have backlinks to this site from other sites:

Site Explorer - Search Results

The keywords in the URL are helping it just like I mentioned above....

[Garch]

I decided to change the title tag but ONLY because I took down my HTML site and installed WordPress....

WordPress definitely helps you rank higher in Google, all things being equal. Google themselves have said that the underlying code of WordPress allows for better optimization, and thus, ranking. I have also seen this firsthand.

[The Expert]

I've found that for a new site with a new domain name it is HIGHLY recommended to have the keyword phrase in the url.

However this doesn't seem to apply if you pickup an aged domain name that relates to the niche and has some PR. Those other factors will trump keyword in the domain any day.

I also agree with James. If you have the EXACT keyword phrase in there then when you have to put your text-version link in your authors resource box when distributing articles it's a big helper.

[MavisAA]

Yes it does provided the website is properly optimized for keywords also and it delivers what it says.

Most important is that the keyword targetted is not broad and does not have too many competing pages already on google.