What are the advantages of a keyword based domain name?

[tomngo]

What are the advantages of a keyword based domain name?

[brian]

If you are asking SEO wise then none. They are just easy to remember for your audience.

[fayeseom]

As the world of business becomes more and more competitive, making sure your search engine optimisation and online marketing campaigns is essential. You have to choose the right approach to get your website to the top of the search engines, so that people can easily find your website and services.

Google is constantly changing and developing its ranking algorithms, which makes it difficult to know what the right strategy is at any given time.

[adibitar69]

In the early days of the of search engine optimisation having a keyword in the domain name was a very important factor with the algorithms. Once people had worked out the ranking factors and indicators, many sites were built purely to satisfy search engines rather than targeting human users. This saw long domain names where marketers tried to fit every relevant keyword into a domain name.

[blackmagicbaba]

From SEO point of view i dont think it has benefit.

[Simi123]

When you create a website, one of the first things you start with is a good domain name. Some businesses don’t hesitate to simply use the company name or a branded term. Others make sure to strategically include a keyword or two in the domain name.

At one point in our SEO history, using keywords in a domain seemed like a great SEO strategy. After all, what’s more important for relevancy than including the exact terms you’d like to rank for directly in the domain name, right?

Well, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller had a different take on the matter during a recent Webmaster Central hangout session.

Keywords in Domain Names - It’s Tougher to Rank Than You Think

John started the discussion by stating that using a keyword in your domain name can be a sound SEO strategy. But there’s a catch.
Keyword Domains Come With a Lot of Competition

Using keywords in domains is an old school SEO tactic that just about everyone knows. Aside from competitors who already use those terms in their domain, other unique domains may have years of optimization already built into their domain. In other words, some keywords already have inherited competition so trying to get a keyword rich domain to rank can be an uphill battle.

SEO Sidebar: Keywords in Domain Perspective

Keep in mind that Google has over 200 ranking factors and shows results they believe are the most relevant to users. Over the past few years, keywords in domains have become less of an SEO advantage due to the amount of competition. However, if we ever came across an older domain that contains keywords, has a good link profile and receives organic traffic, we wouldn’t pass it up.

Real Life Example of Choosing Branded Terms Over Keywords

Back when we were looking for a company name and associated domain, we contemplated the idea of incorporating some keywords such as “Austin” and “SEO.” However, many other local SEO companies were already using this approach. Plus, we believed that there were other SEO tactics that played a much bigger factor in winning rankings.

Instead, we went with a brand name that had little to no results in Google, SearchRPM. And guess who shows up first when you search for SearchRPM? We do! Ranking for our brand name was a small but pivotal victory in search.

Had we gone with a domain name like, TheBestAustinSEOCompany(dot com), who knows how long it would’ve taken for us to rank for our brand name. If anyone searched for “Best Austin SEO Company,” I’m sure we would’ve gone head to head with some established players.

Some people also worry that including keywords in a domain name could get a site flagged. This is due to the idea that when people link to a website, they often use the domain name as the anchor text. The concern is looking spammy to Google, especially if many people are linking to the site using the domain name.

Using our situation above, had we went with the keyword rich domain, it’s very likely that publishers would link to us using “Best Austin SEO Company,” as their anchor text. The last thing you want Google to think is that you’re trying to manipulate rankings in your favor by using keyword rich anchor text across the web.

According to John Mueller, as long as your links look natural they shouldn’t be a problem. Natural links with the domain name in the anchor can still help your site rank for those keywords, however it still might not outweigh the competition for top rankings.

Keyword Domains Can Pigeon Hole a Brand

John also made another good point. Using a domain name simply because it has good keywords can pigeon hole the business. It’s easier to expand and move in different directions when the domain isn’t built around a few specific keywords or phrases.

The safer bet for a business that wants to rank for their domain name as well as a wide variety of keywords is to go with a branded domain. John’s general sentiment was, “be your brand, not your keywords.”

Our SearchRPM Plug

The SearchRPM team offers comprehensive SEO services for businesses of all sizes. We can help you build everything from the ground up so your SEO is set on a solid foundation.

Check the strength of your domain name and dozens of other ranking factors on your current website - use the Check My Site tool to get your Free SEO Report here!

[master11]

Its just that a keyword named domain is easy to remember for its audience.

[Simi123]

Keyworded domains have two major advantages in online marketing: they communicate to the visitor right away what the site is about and they are a huge boon to SEO marketing. A visitor going to “tubesocks.com” will definitely understand that this site sells tube socks. A search engine, when indexing a site, will likely see the words “tube” and “socks” in the domain, marking them as keywords.

Every search engine marketer knows that search engines love keywords. They literally eat them up. Having keywords in a domain name makes it a bigger meal to the search engine, pumping up the site’s potential search engine optimization (SEO) marketing potential. Provided the site has content to match the domain name, of course.

One of the big disadvantages for keyworded domains is in their relatively narrow focus. This can shut them off from being utilized for other searches. For instance, if a business is affiliate-based and it’s focus is on book and software sales, having a keyword-based domain such as “software4u.com” will more or less eliminate the use of book sales keywords for SEO. An attempt to combine two keywords or phrases into a domain name like “booksandsoftware4u.com” is definitely too long to be utilized for radio, print, or other advertising and is going to be hard for potential customers to remember, failing to capture those all-important return sales. A balance would have to be struck, with either two different domains registered and the products separated on two separate sites, which doubles the marketing, or having one domain forward to another, which will knock SEO potential.

There is one more reason why keyworded domains are so useful in online marketing that has not yet been mentioned. That is backlinking. When one site links to another (through a “buddy” page, article posts, as reference, etc.) that is called “backlinking.” This is very important to search engines and backlinks with keywords in them (i.e. a keyword-based domain) is a double-whammy in this regard.

Keyworded domains have some great advantages and many marketers are utilizing them as part of their overall marketing strategy. Keyword-based domains can provide better SEO, better customer retention, and higher overall search result potential.

[richardmsmith]

Exact-match keyword domain names are treated to be the most significant, and as a result, sites with keyword domains usually will rank higher than websites without keyword domains. The Search Engine Ranking Factors report for 2010 ranked keyword uses in the root domain name as the third highest ranking factors for on-page SEO optimisation.

[damponting44]

In the early days of the search engine optimisation having a keyword in the domain name was a very important factor with the algorithms. Exact-match keyword domain names are treated to be the most significant, and as a result, sites with keyword domains usually will rank higher than websites without keyword domains.