The Importance of Having Your Keyword in Your Domain Name

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I just wanted to give a quick example of the SEO boost that having your keyword in your domain name can bring.

6 months ago I registered a domain based on a keyword with 41000 exact matches. I slapped up a quick site with nothing but a title and a logo on it. No content at all. I haven't touched the site in the 6 months I've had it, never pointed a single backlink at it. Going through my sites today I decided on a whim to check if it was ranking at all for my chosen keyword. To my surprise it was sitting at #9! With absolutely no content or backlinking work it had climbed all the way to the first page of the Google rankings based solely on the strength of having the keyword in the domain name.

Just figured I'd give a real world example for those who are questioning the importance of having their keyword in their domain name. It isn't absolutely crucial - it is obviously possible to rank without doing so - but as you can see it can definitely save you a ton of work as you try and climb the SERPs.
#search engine optimization #domain #google #importance #keyword #keywords #ranking #serps
  • Having your keyword in your domain name does help but I believe it also depends on what kind of keyword (long tail vs. short tail). Still cool as heck!
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    • Yeah, I agree that it has a lot to do with the competitiveness of the keyword.

      I had a URL along the lines of "www.alaskaroofers.com" with literally no site at all rank #2 for "alaska roofers" for many months. And I really mean I had no site -- if you went to the URL all you saw was the directory showing cgi-bin.

      I got a kick out of outranking so many other sites with just the keyword in the URL. I felt like an SEO genius!

      Wendell
  • Nice work. Having your keyword in your domain is a great first step for SEO.
  • No doubt the keyword in the domain name helps, but it may not simply be that factor alone. Did you make a title tag with the keyword in it? Did you add meta tags with the keyword in them?

    And probably the biggest variable - how SEO'ed are the Top 10 sites when you search that keyword without quotes (broad search)? Just having 41,000 indexed when you do an exact search isn't enough to tell you really what's going on with the Top 10. It could be that very few of those 41,000 have really targeted your keyword. They might be ranking high on essentially the same passive factors that got you to #9.

    John
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  • Mikestenger - only a two word keyword phrase, so I guess it would fall in the short-tail category.

    Zeus66 - It is actually set up as a Wordpress blog - The keyword is in the site title as well as description.

    Granted, my site wouldn't have reached this ranking if it was targeting a super competitive niche, but for those who are setting up niche sites with relatively low strength of competition, having a domain with the keyword in it could be 50% of the battle. Why spend hours building backlinks if you don't have to?
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  • in my experience it depends on the niche and the competition and what keywords you are targetting. If yuo can get the keywords in your domain great, but not the ned of the world if they are not there.
    Catherine
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    • Hi everyone. Im a newbie here and starting to learn more about SEO. I have a question reference having your product in the domain name. What if the product you have is a very popular product and the domain is simply not available ?

      Does the domain lose its "quality" in terms of search results if you included another word in the domain ? For example your 1st choice was floridaholidays.com, but due to it not being available you opted for myfloridaholidays.com ?
      • [1] reply
  • does having "blogspot" or wordpress in the domain effect the PR as well?
    • [1] reply
    • Hi futuremills,

      If by "PR" you mean PageRank then no.

      PageRank is a measure of link popularity to the page, nothing to do with domain names.
  • do you guys think that google favor ..blogspot.com in their indexing? i came across several occasionl that blogspot.com web sit high in first page, wordpress.com at far behind...
    • [1] reply
    • Hi vivagogo,

      I've never seen evidence of favoritism in their index. I would attribute the higher rankings to the fact that bloggers can put AdSense on their blogspot.com sites so you may see much heavier SEO efforts due to this financial incentive.
  • The Importance of Having Your Keyword in Your Domain Name because some Search Engines place relevancy on them.

    One more particle reason is that when u website update, it may takes time for google to crawl it, but the keword in domian make the process short IMO.

    Correct me if i am worng, and open to different opinions.
  • Keywords in domain name I see different results between Bing, Yahoo and Google. Bing/MSN see better results and fast.
    • [1] reply
  • Thanks, good information.
  • It shows that anything is possible if you use SEO properly
    • [1] reply
    • It is no conicidence that when you search on google a lot of the top results contain your search term in the domain name.
  • One thing, don't hyphenate your domain name keywords for Google. For example:

    alaskaroofers.com is better than
    alaska-roofers.com

    Recently there has been a huge drop in hyphenated domains from the search results.
    • [1] reply
    • I'm still seeing plenty of hyphenated domains, including some new ones. Where did you get this information?

      There have been some significant shift in rankings recently as Google is moving towards the full implemtation of the caffeine update. I have seen lots of non-hyphenated domains drop from the SERPs as well as hyphenated. Couldn't we claim that non-hyphenated domains should be avoided based on your reasoning?

      Maybe it's not the hyphen, or lack thereof, that is responsible for these changes?
  • Yes very well said rainingproblems. This is the first article I've read on this site and it was a good read. Nice to meet you all.
    • [1] reply
    • having your keywords in your domain name will help SEO. but thats is only on page SEO.. since your keywords dont have many competitors, you can easily get rank with that domain name.. i belive sooner or later your rank will drop when there's new competitors..

      the most important thing in SEO is backlinks with your keyword as your anchor text... you can rank with any keyword if you have enough backlinks.. try use google and search "click here".. look at the first three.. is there any "click here" words inside it domain or in its content? think about it..

      cheers...
  • So a specific niche with little to no competition will be successful with the keyword domain name? But with some competition in the field its mainly about the backlinks? Sorry if I restated what was said, just making sure.

    All the best,
    Curtis
  • I see absolutely no evidence that hyphens make any difference. Yes, the keyword in the domain name is big, but I've not seen a thing to indicate that alaskaroofers.com is any better or worse (SEO-wise) than alaska-roofers.com

    I'd be interested to see anything that amounts to real factual evidence of this claim.

    John
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    • [1] reply
    • Google is cracking down on this method a little bit now that they have moved over to their caffeinated algorithm. Surely it can still be done if you plan on being in the game for the LONG RUN.

      I also recommend the use of .COMS and .ORG for this strategy as well. Stay away from the others UNLESS again, you are in it for the long haul.
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  • Having an exact match domain is the single easiest and fastest way to insure your site will achieve maximum ranking power for your keyword phrase on a brand new site.

    There has even been talk that the new caffeine algo actually gives *more* boost for exact match domains. I'm waiting for Cutts to confirm that and I'll post the video.

    I've had enough EMD's rank on page 1 with no backlinks to completely believe and trust in this technique. So much so that if I cannot get the EMD for a given keyword phrase, I will pass on it.

    Power User Tip: You can now search for EMDs directly inside of the Google Adwords Keywords Tool using the tip I explain in this thread and in this blog post.
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  • yeah that's true, create articles with keywords that match with the domain name
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  • Oh! There is a tough competition in this area of inserting a keyword in the domain name. Yes, it would be great if you get through! Well, results will be very good then and you should consider yourself lucky if you get though.
  • hmmm... well, the importance of having the keyword in your domain is that it is easy and more efficient for users to search for your site. It will be less hassle and very time-saving when someone try to look for a certain website.
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    The Importance of Having Your Keyword in Your Domain Name

    I just wanted to give a quick example of the SEO boost that having your keyword in your domain name can bring. 6 months ago I registered a domain based on a keyword with 41000 exact matches. I slapped up a quick site with nothing but a title and a logo on it. No content at all. I haven't touched the site in the 6 months I've had it, never pointed a single backlink at it. Going through my sites today I decided on a whim to check if it was ranking at all for my chosen keyword. To my surprise it was sitting at #9! With absolutely no content or backlinking work it had climbed all the way to the first page of the Google rankings based solely on the strength of having the keyword in the domain name.