Comments on: Domain Names: Are They Are Important To SEO?

By: BlogMarketingGuru

BlogMarketingGuru — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 18:45:55 +0000

Namecritic is correct. I’ve closely studied the effect of a domain name in the SEO process. It is a 10 out of 10 when it comes to speed to market, and another 10 out of 10 when it comes to the “with all other things being equal”. The domain name with a .com extension trumps everythign else.

By: namecritic

namecritic — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 05:04:16 +0000

I think I’d bump the importance of the right domain name to around a 5 out of 10 if you are talking about ranking for the exact phrase in your domain name.

I recommend clients buy two domain names. One that has keywords and that is where the website is physically located. The other domain can be shorter, more memorable, and used for marketing, branding, etc. That one points to the website and when users type it in, that domain appears in the address bar.

This gives you the keyword rich link for your domain name and your shorter name for branding.

I can show several websites with very little link popularity that rank #1 for the exact phrase in the domain name. They have decent content, but few backlinks, so the domain name must be making a difference.

By: Colin

Colin — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 07:35:47 +0000

The SEO benefit of a keyword in your domain name comes more from links than from the domain itself. Having a keyword in the domain name (and name of your site) encourages automatic placement of that keyword in links to your site when people link to your site by the domain name.

Great for some situations, but as you say, having a keyword-filled domain probably hurts more than it helps if the domain name is too long, awkward or difficult to remember.

By: Tim Watson

Tim Watson — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 18:21:13 +0000

Great information Nick! I found this searching yahoo, and your site was #1 out of 191 million results for search engine optimization, I’ll pay attention!

Tim