Hello, I was curious about one thing. If somone owns a domain such as : extremesportschallange.com, does it necessarily mean that it will be listed top rank for the keyword "extreme sports challenge"? When Google ranks pages, it checks Title, backlinks, indexed pages, keywords, etc... but does take in account the domain URL? If yes, what role does the domain URL play?
In our experience, the keyword(s) in the URL have a significant impact on SE positioning. If your site has the other necessary criteria that you mention (content, in bound links, clean design, etc...) the domain will definitely become the digital icing on your SEO cake... ;-) Rob
Awesome... Just what I needed to hear .. It would be great to hear more opinions about this. I have this one domain in redemption period that is a "phrase", which has overture over 10,000. So if this is true, the domain would certainly be worth redeeming and developing.
Yep am beginning to think that Google and other SE 's do like to see keyowrd in domain , for instance the first domain in my signature (forumsignature.net) is no 1 for forumsignature in google, which is nothing to brag about ( the domain has only been linked a few weeks) , but the fact that it shows for forumsignature not forum signature seems to point in this direction ..
The thing about this is the domain only matters for Roman based languages mainly. Languages like Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Hindu, Russian it doesn't matter currently with English based domains. With IDN domains (International Domain Names) people can have a domain with the native characters. Google doesn't take this in effect for the results yet but I'm sure it's on the list of two do list as the use of them become more popular...
Having a domain name with your keywords is important, but primarily because it increases your chances of getting backlinks with appropriate anchor text. When people link to you, they have very little choice except to use the keywords as the anchor text. Yes, the domain name itself helps a little bit, but nothing compared to keyword anchortext links.
I just redeemed my domain "MadonnaOfTheRocks.com" The term is searched around 8000 times a month, so i figured I'll give it a shot and see what I can do with it. I'll develop it and see how high I can rank for the term "madonna of the rocks"... Should be ok
I think that the URL does have alot to do with it. While developing my site I posted it to eyeofanartist.com because that URL has a PR3. Recently I moved it to GreenGambler.com. I have noticed a big difference when searching the term "greenGambler" in the search engines. I do think it's becuase my new URL contains the word Gambler. Just a guess.
The ideal URL would be http://www.extreme-sports-challenge.com but www.blanddescription.com/extreme-sports-challenge.html would do almost as well. The world is full of people that buy domains they think are critical to their business only to find someone outflanking them.
when the keyword you searched for appears in the domain google makes it bold... so i guess it is part of the ranking, too
Well, I guess I'll just have to wait and see... I'm in the progress of developing the MadonnaOfTheRocks.com site. It might however take me some time to do, since I have exams coming up. Once its developed, I need to work on getting some backlinks and writing some articles maybe .. Any suggestions from people who are a little more experienced? Thanks for all the feedback so far
I have noticed that msn in particular does like keywords in the url. Because of this I am considering launching companion sites to my main site. Basically I have a main site which is Brand.com. I am planning on making some sites and optimizing them which follow a BrandKeywordKeyword.com formula. I have about 6 domains registered that follow that formula. I don't plan on duplicating content but are the any other things I should be watching out for when doing this to make sure the SEs like what I'm doing? In a sense this seems like a bit of a sneaky thing to do but my competitors are doing it so I'm thinking I should be keeping up... Any tips on approach for this?
Cool .. does length of the URL play any role? For example my url is MadonnaOfTheRocks.com ... its quite long. Does it matter at all?
This isn't true at all. If you search the big SEO forums you will see that it is commonly accepted that keywords in directory or file names do not have an impact on SERPs. There are other benefits to having keyword named directories and files but direct rankings improvement is not one of them. having keywords in the domain IS important.
I agree, else you would see a lot of top ranked listings from people using freehosting services to promote their sites. You would just need to look up profitable keywords and keep creating directories based on those keywords on the same host. Well actually now that I think of it, I might as well try that myself .. lol