I'm going for a keyword that has little competition however all of the domains with the exact phrase have been registered by squatters. I know that when there is little SEO competition for a phrase, domain name is a big help getting to the top. It's a two word keyword phrase and at this point I'm down to registering it with a hyphen in the name and taking a .biz or .info site. Is this a good idea? Will a hyphenated .info or .biz site still help my ranking? Thanks, Zan32
Sure it will. Google doesn't care about .biz or .info. It does pay attention to your domain name. Now, as far as ranking goes, it doesn't matter and won't help. But it could help your site get found via natural search. I have a 3 word domain name that is very highly competitive. When I searched for 1, then 2 of the words I was no where to be found. When I searched for all 3 (without the extension) I was on the first page. BTW, the page rank of this site is 0.
How much do the hyphens matter? Will my-keyword.com rank lower then mykeyword.com? Will it still be on the front page if there is no competition for "my keyword" and all of the mykeyword.com, .org and dot biz sites are just squatters and link farmers?
As I said before, it does not matter. Your site is not ranked by your domain name. Nobody can tell you where or even if your site will show up at all. If your page has good content, good keywords, and is SEO'd, you will have a chance of your page showing up if someone is searching for your keywords.
I had the same experience for one of my sites. So doesn't this mean that domain name does matter. I mean simply by creating a new page with a domain that is the keyword phrase it often shows up on the first page for that exact keyword search. For instance if you had www.greatbarberjokes.com then when someone searched for "great barber jokes" you'd come up first if there was no SEO competition for the phrase. This is basically what I'm asking. Simply for natural search with no SEO is "my-keyword.com" going to come up when someone searches for "my keyword" exactly on google.
Oh, I understand your question. I just think that nobody except Google could give you an honest definitive answer. And I doubt if they would even answer that question. You would be asking them to reveal one of their big secrets. And yes, the domain name does matter, a little. Is it enough to change a site that is already established just to get that little extra edge on your competition? Nope. But it certainly can't hurt if it is a new domain. Actually, when I did that test with my domain name I was really surprised. I have tried it several times since the original test and my results have varied quite a bit. I tried from different computers in different geo areas on 4 occasions and appeared only once out of the 4 times in eighth position of the first page. Good luck, zeek