One way links and anchor texts on those oneway links predominently determine your page ranking in search engines. So if you include your principal keyword in your domain name, on incoming oneway links to your site will then have your principal keyword as anchor texts.
Forget about SEO for a moment. What do you look for in a quality domain name? Something short Something easy for people to remember Something that's easily brandable A domain name that's available (duh) Take those four points into consideration. Do keywords fit in there at all? Yes and no. Why not? Because keywords aren't that important to most search engines. Yes, some search engines (most notably MSN and Yahoo) will place some additional weight on keywords in domain names than others (like Google) will, but at the end of the day keywords in your domain name are not what makes people come to your site. Having a domain name that's short, brandable, and easy for people to remember, combined with quality relevant (and well written) content other site owners would kill their own mothers to link to are. So where do keywords come into play with your domain name? Branding. Let's say you're the owner of a tavern called Red River Inn (I didn't search to see if it exists, but let's say that it's a ficticious business, ok?). You want to register a domain name that's short, easy to remember and that you can brand for your business. In this case, the name of your business would be the best bet, so you go to your domain name registrar of choice and see if redriverinn is available. For the sake of this post, let's say the .com .net and .org are all available, so you register all three (using the .com for the business, and letting a 301 redirect point the .net and .org to the .com). Let's take a look at what we have here, ok? We have a domain name that's three words long (it's short, as are the individual words), it's easy to remember (it's your business name), and it's easy to build an onlilne brand around (see the previous point). Will redriverinn.com make you rank well in the search engines? Probably not. But it can help, and every last little bit helps. Combine that with quality content that's relevant to your business and some good old fashioned word of mouth (marketing/promotion), and I'd say your chances of success are very good.
ok so most people agree that tosome extent having keywords in the domain helps. my question is does it matter if its a .com or .info? will free-online-games.com rank better for the term free online games than free-online-games.info if all other factors like pagerank, anchor text etc is similar?
While Google does pay some attention to the keywords in domain names (and the order they appear in) it doesn't pay as much attention to them as MSN and Yahoo do, instead preferring to concentrate on the page content instead. (Note I did not say that Google flat out ignores keywords in domain names; all I said is that it prefers page content.)
always put keywords in your domain name. the domain names have better rankings from the sub pages in the search engines! regards
To my opinion, it's not the most important factor (that is, backlinks of course), but when I make a new website, I mostly use one keyword. (Well, not if you make a website about your own product of course).
Some directories will list (and link back) your site based on your domain (Yahoo, ...) and that's why it's good to have at least some part of your main keyword in the domain name. A keyword link from all Yahoo subdirectories can make a big change in your rankings for that keyword.
It means to be listed in Yahoo directories, but if you get listed several times - you get listed in the Yahoo subdirectories. No matter how you put it it refers to Yahoo directories. regards
It will be great that your domian name cam explain people by itself about your site content. The short domain name I think now it 's not important because people do not need to remember they can bookmark it. You have to try to set your domain name and you title that match about your site content and can short explain to people who gonna be you visitors is this the right site they should try.
No, that's what quality content does. Having keywords in the domain name can help, but it's not the end-all be-all.