im not sure if this is the right category to ask so sorry in advance if so. but i was wondering if i was going to have a sports site would it be better to have blah.com or blahsports.com for better search engine results. also, how much does it affect the ranking?
Yep, Sezerb is right - you should complete your keyword research first, and then create your URL based on the keywords you choose to target. Based on my experience, and also what I've read in the forums, your URL has a significant impact on your ranking in the SERPs. In addition, it's a good idea to use hyphens between words in your URL (using your example, blah-sports.com), as this will allow the SE's spiders to differentiate the words. HTH, Sam
My opinion is that maybe in MSN and Yahoo more than G, the domain could help very little only. I personally think it is better to use something that your user will remember. Say you have a cricket site I would rather go for "batsman.com" than "sport-cricket.com"
I agree with this, provided that you're aiming for repeat or type-in traffic. If you're aiming for traffic from the search engines, then I think the latter will serve you better. Sam
I think it doesn’t hurt to include the word sport or whatever in your domain. Has for it being more search engine friendly and helping ranking better on SERP’s I don’t think that it would have that much of an impact.
I'd say stick your keyword you are targetting in your title. If you think about it, whenever someone links to you, they will usually use your title as anchor text. That will help in your ranking for that particular keyword. For example, when you submit to directories, they usually use the website's title as the anchor text. And if you had a keyword in your title, it would really help the general SEO.
hey guys thanks for all the help, i just have one more question. Some of you said to use hyphens. I thought that was one of the worst things you could do since it makes your site look "generic" or not professional.
This is a REALLY good question. The "generic" and "unprofessional" reputation that domains with hyphens have received is based on the preponderance of spam or MFA sites - many of which are created with page-generation software that takes a list of keyword phrases and creates a page for each keyword, with hyphens (or underscores) between each word. The advantage of using hyphens is that it allows the SEs to differentiate the individual words in your URL, which is just one of many ways for you to emphasize your keywords. (This is not true of underscores, by the way.) My feeling is that, ultimately, your site will be judged on its quality and content, by both the SEs and visitors alike. I've seen many "legitimate" sites that use hyphens in the URL, and I'm not aware of any SE penalties related to using them. My opinion is that it's beneficial to use them, and I use them on my sites. HTH, Sam