How Much Importance % Do You Think A Domain Name Has On Your Overall Biz?

5% - I don't believe that the name of a website has a tremendous relevance to your success. Your content and value to your customer niche is what will bring them back. Since your site has been around for 2 years, what kind of success have you been having? How are you marketing your site? Have you been leveraging social media and commenting on other blogs that have a similar message and of course leveraging your signature to your blog? You know - the basic observations.

I'll go with the other extreme - 95%. But, I'll add the caveat that it really depends on what you're doing.

I build brands - specifically, in the health and fitness industry. A fairly competitive space. I previously owned a small, niche supplement store that generated profits in the mid $xx,xxx. It wasn't going to grow much larger because it was branded wrong, around one single product. I sold it to build something much larger.

I spent over a year searching for my next domain and finding that domain has been the smartest thing I've done in my 10+ years online.

Almost every time I successfully pitch the brand, the feedback is 'we love your brand'. If I would have just 'taken action' (as people around here love to say) and named it Gambino's Suppz... even if I used the same exact products, there's no doubt in my mind that I would have gone nowhere.

An interesting question.

SEO.

A relevant keyword in your domain still acts as a relevancy signal, but given the weight carried by the other 199 elements that make up Google's ranking algorithm, the weight is likely less than 5%.

Domain relevance to SEO:

- Age of Domain.
- Keyword in Domain.
- Keyword at Start.
- Current Owner's Length of Registration.
- Keyword in Subdomain(s).
- History of Domain.
- Exact Match Domain (best).
- Public WHOIS (best).
- Clean WHOIS for Owner.
- Dot Com for Global Audience.

BRAND.

It's 2018. Almost 2019.

Name is everything.

Or, I should say, brand is everything.

Newbies (and many of your gurus) choose keyword domains (because they appear to think we still live in the early 2000s) and it hurts them.

The current mode, and it works, is a short name that looks good, is memorable, and captures the core message of the brand.

Your domain name - nowadays - should be chosen with brand, not SEO, in mind.

- Tom

The words you use has absolutely nothing to do with how you will rank. It does matter to actual people, though. As long as it is memorable and somewhat related, it has less than 5% effect on how well your site will do.

What does MOZ have to do with SEO? What does Screaming Frog have to do with crawling a website? Pretty much anyone in the SEO industry knows who they are, though!

Call me old-fashioned but .com still rules and a name that is easy to pronounce and easy to remember is preferable if you are trying to build a business. SEO is not the only factor, but brand recognition is greatly enhanced if your domain has some relevance to what your business is all about. I suppose if you can spend a grand a week on advertising those qualities are somewhat mitigated, but for those of us on relatively small budget, I'd recommend going for the EMD (exact match domain name).

The problem is that what have heretofore been considered 'premium' domain names sell for considerably more than you'd pay for any old .com domain names. And the reason they are so expensive is that many businesses still place value on the benefits I have mentioned above.

Yes, of course, you can argue the point. SEO has many factors to take into consideration and branding a business can be just as challenging. But if I had to choose between gobbledygook.io and a relevant EMD .com, I'll go for the .com every time.

A website name doesn't matter with me.

A domain name does matter with me.

Full stop.