I am in the process of choosing a domain name for my new site and have done a little keyword research to see what people are typing in when they are looking for real estate in this area. Several of the domain names that I would have chosen are taken but I was wondering if the order of the keywords matter. For example, if I know that bogus beach real estate is the most searched but that domain is taken; would realestateatbogusbeach.com be just as good or does this even matter at all? I guess I am just wondering does the order of the keywords make a difference?
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Keywords In Domain Name
Started by
jenniferlb
, Feb 21 2010 12:05 PM
16 replies to this topic
#2
Jill
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Posted 21 February 2010 - 01:00 PM
Choose something memorable that you can brand. If you have keywords in it, that's fine, but don't base your decision on keywords, imo.
#3
PatrickGer
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Posted 21 February 2010 - 04:52 PM
From the rankings Ive seen it seems that exact match keyword domains - which means all of the searched for keywords and no other word - get a bit of a boost when ranking in Google's results. The order of those words doesn't seem to matter from what I've seen.
However, that isn't really important, because of what Jill said, and she's right about that imho.
You should find a healthy balance between creating your website for the visitors and optimizing it for the search engines, but at the end of the day it should look good to your visitors most of all.
keywords in domain name are good (but not necessary), and having all of the keywords in the domain name (if were talking about a 4 word keyword phrase) is definitely overdone, considering what little search engine benefit it offers.
I think thiking along those lines (wanting to get all the kw's in the domain name) is a typical beginner's mistake - one that I've made, too LOL, so I know what Im talking about
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The furthest I would go in your example is BogusBeachEstate com. That one, I think, would be a good balance between the two (probably actually a bit too keyword heavy).
Look at this site for example: HighRankings is memorable and descriptive of the site, not lots of keyword mashed together.
However, that isn't really important, because of what Jill said, and she's right about that imho.
You should find a healthy balance between creating your website for the visitors and optimizing it for the search engines, but at the end of the day it should look good to your visitors most of all.
keywords in domain name are good (but not necessary), and having all of the keywords in the domain name (if were talking about a 4 word keyword phrase) is definitely overdone, considering what little search engine benefit it offers.
I think thiking along those lines (wanting to get all the kw's in the domain name) is a typical beginner's mistake - one that I've made, too LOL, so I know what Im talking about
. The furthest I would go in your example is BogusBeachEstate com. That one, I think, would be a good balance between the two (probably actually a bit too keyword heavy).
Look at this site for example: HighRankings is memorable and descriptive of the site, not lots of keyword mashed together.
#4
Connie
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Posted 22 February 2010 - 08:30 PM
QUOTE
You should find a healthy balance between creating your website for the visitors and optimizing it for the search engines, but at the end of the day it should look good to your visitors most of all.
I would be interested in what you think the difference is?
#5
perkle
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Posted 15 June 2011 - 08:29 AM
Hi everyone
I have a question about the domain name importance.
If you do a google search for custom-house-plans you will see listed a new site that according to the wayback machine has only been crawled one time since 2008 and been in number one ranking for a short time.
It only has a PR of 0
HOW can this be?
I have a question about the domain name importance.
If you do a google search for custom-house-plans you will see listed a new site that according to the wayback machine has only been crawled one time since 2008 and been in number one ranking for a short time.
It only has a PR of 0
HOW can this be?
#6
Michael Martinez
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Posted 15 June 2011 - 12:33 PM
QUOTE(perkle @ Jun 15 2011, 06:29 AM) 
Hi everyone
I have a question about the domain name importance.
If you do a google search for custom-house-plans you will see listed a new site that according to the wayback machine has only been crawled one time since 2008 and been in number one ranking for a short time.
It only has a PR of 0
HOW can this be?
I have a question about the domain name importance.
If you do a google search for custom-house-plans you will see listed a new site that according to the wayback machine has only been crawled one time since 2008 and been in number one ranking for a short time.
It only has a PR of 0
HOW can this be?
Things change over time.
#7
Jill
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Posted 15 June 2011 - 02:57 PM
QUOTE
HOW can this be?
Google erroneously (in my opinion) puts tons and tons of weighting on the domain name, which makes it easy to rank highly for just that one factor.
#8
Michael Martinez
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Posted 15 June 2011 - 04:01 PM
I have yet to see any real evidence that it was Google that put enormous weight on the domain name. It was SEOs who went out of their ways to buy and link to exact-match domains. I never had any problem outranking such domains with off-keyword domains. Nor, for that matter, did sites like Wikipedia, Complaints Board, Consumer-whatever-keyword-you-want, CNN, Answers.com, eHow, etc.
That SEOs were able to leverage the exact-match domain names may have forced Google to downgrade the value of keywords-in-domain/URL -- or maybe Panda took care of all that.
That SEOs were able to leverage the exact-match domain names may have forced Google to downgrade the value of keywords-in-domain/URL -- or maybe Panda took care of all that.
#9
Jill
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Posted 16 June 2011 - 07:09 AM
It sure doesn't appear to be downgraded yet. EMDs are working as well as they always have it seems.
#10
Michael Martinez
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Posted 16 June 2011 - 01:45 PM
Yeah, it's probably that a lot of people who were relying on EMDs created low quality sites and when Panda slapped them they jumped to the conclusion that "Oh! EMDs don't work any more".
They were never very special in the first place. It's like sifting through all the marbles in your friend's bag, picking all the green ones and putting them on the floor, and saying, "You only play with green marbles".
They were never very special in the first place. It's like sifting through all the marbles in your friend's bag, picking all the green ones and putting them on the floor, and saying, "You only play with green marbles".
#11
ABAR
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Posted 16 June 2011 - 06:56 PM
do you think the exact match domain name weighting will go away at some point?
#12
Michael Martinez
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Posted 16 June 2011 - 07:09 PM
QUOTE(ABAR @ Jun 16 2011, 04:56 PM)
do you think the exact match domain name weighting will go away at some point?
I don't think it ever existed except in the minds of SEOs who made it happen through a placebo effect.
Google has conceded for many years that it gave some value to keywords-in-URL. It was only this year or late last year that they acknowledged that people were upset about "exact match domains" but if you go back and look at their responses, they always struck me as somewhat perplexed. "We're looking into that" Matt Cutts said a time or two.
Who looks into something that is happening exactly the way people think it's happening?
The real power of an exact-match domain is that it's easy to remember (people are already using the term for search) and many of the links will use the domain name as anchor text rather than specific (or inspecific) expressions.
The "EMD boost" was always more of a secondary effect of funneling targeted anchor text into a domain. It never needed to be more than that. And no one has ever shown that it was more than that.
Now that SEOs believe that Exact Match Domains have been downgraded by Panda, they are abandoning the practice of optimizing with EMDs -- hence, they no longer see any "evidence" that EMDs work. Therefore, they must be correct in concluding that there was an Exact-Match-Domain boost all along.
It's circular, illogical, and self-perpetuating unscientific opinion that created a marketing craze.
#13
Jill
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Posted 16 June 2011 - 09:54 PM
QUOTE(ABAR @ Jun 16 2011, 07:56 PM)
do you think the exact match domain name weighting will go away at some point?
Matt Cutts has stated they are looking into it but who knows what that means or how long it will take. Right now its the easiest way to "spam" your way into the results.
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