The site GuitarLessons.net has only around 170 backlinks and ranks at the top of the 2nd page for "guitar lessons" a highly competitive term. I remember a year back it was on the first page. I don't think the domain TLD plays a role (.com, .info whatever). However, I think the domain name has a big influence.
The domain name has a big influence. And, interesting, '-' and '_' characters in the domain name can significantly decrease this influence.
True, it does. I have many domains with plain Wordpress installs ranking around 10 to 30th spots for their keywords. And some of these have dashes too, so I wouldn't agree with the "significantly decrease" remark. Finally, domains can't have underscores ('_'). Perhaps you meant underscores in full URLs? In that case too, I have seen a lot of people commenting that it actually helps Google to understand what you mean with your url. Here is a realted fun post about how non-dashing can take an unfortunate turn: http://blog.dreamhosters.com/2007/01/26/20-more-unfortunate-domain-names/
It doesn't matter on what type of domain extension, SE don't look at that. But in domain name, it has a big role in SE especially if your keyword/s is part of the domain name.
If your keywords are part of the domain name like ('guitar lessons') in this case, it is definitely a plus, but not so much as you can find other websites which do not have the keywords in this order appearing before this result in the search results for the search 'guitar lessons'.
Yeah, but those sites had to have thousands of quality backlinks to beat GuitarLessons.net which only has around 171 backlinks. GuitarLessons.net could go to the front page easily with just a little more work.
Presence of a keyword in a domain name surely has a big unfluence on your ranking for that keyword. The TLD does play a role but a very negligible one. E.g. .Gov, .Edu & .mil have a higher authority over other tlds like .com, .net, etc.. however some tlds like .info have a lower authority.
Domain factor is just a small portion that effects our ranking in search results. In this case, "guitarlessons.net" really make use of the domain sector in SEO point of view. This site is still lack of some points: - huge meta keywords (will be marked spamming in many search engines) - all images don't use ALT tags - domain expiring in 5 months - not all pages have meta tags declared - etc I noticed some strong backlinks this site received: - DMOZ listed - Yahoo Directory listed Now, you know the strength and weakness of your competitor. It is easy to beat his ranking by getting some quality relevant backlinks from high authority sites.
with good onpage and offpage seo, having the keyword as your url/in your url is negligible. however, the thing that it IS good for is an initial short term SEO boost when you're first starting out. if you can, it's better to have a brand than a keyword specific url... and actually, depending on the search engine a '-' can actually help your seo, because some SE's recognize this character as a space, thus treat each word as it's own separate word.
as all above said Domain name plays a vital role in SE Rankings. if u book a domain withe a niche keyword which u use it for ur Off Page or On page Promotion, then it domain fetches you alot.....
I think domain names play a very important role in search engine optimization. If we get a very related URL half the job will be done.
From what Ive read (in general, not in this thread) domain name is important but not HUGELY important. Sure having a great keyword in it is helpful, but it isnt life or death. Also like said above, hyphens in the name are not good. Or a domain with more then 30 characters
Having a domain name that EXACTLY matches the search phrase carries a lot of weight. So if the domain name is keyword1keyword2keyword3.com and the user searches for "keyword1 keyword2 keyword3" then it will get a big boost... A few links with "keyword1 keyword2 keyword3" as the link text and that domain should jump to the top. But partial domain name matches don't carry much weight at all... So if the domain name is keyword1keyword2keyword3.com and the user search for "keyword1 keyword3 keyword4" the fact that the keywords "keyword1" and "keyword3" are in both the domain name and search phrase doesn't seem to help really anymore than having those same keyword phrases appear elsewhere in the URL like in the folder name or page name portion of the URL (like in example.com/keyword1/keyword3.html). Having hyphens in the domain name does not reduce the effectiveness of the keywords in the domain name from a ranking perspective. Google and almost every other engine on the planet recognize '-' as a word separator. So keyword1keyword2.com and keyword1-keyword2.com will BOTH get the same kind of boost at Google when a user searches for "keyword1 keyword2". The advantage to NOT using hyphens in the domain name is from a user perspective. Domain names without hyphens are shorter, easier to remember, easier to type, and are considered by many users to be more legitimate... similar to the way consumers/users see .com domains as more legitimate than .net, .info, .biz, etc. domains. And Google is TLD agnostic... They could care less about the TLD UNLESS you are using a country coded TLD (ccTLD). These affect geotargeting in Google and can therefore affect WHICH view of Google's index you are ranked well in. So generally speaking, a domain name really only significantly helps you to rank for a single keyword phrase - the EXACT match. If you can get a domain name that is an exact match for a highly competitive search phrase in your niche, this is a quick way to the top, but only for that one exact match keyword phrase. But if no such domains are available then you are generally better off picking a domain that is short, easy to remember, easy to type, and easy to brand. PS: NEVER use underscores in ANY portion of your URL. Underscores are NOT seen by Google as word separators... Hyphens ARE! When searching at Google (and from a ranking perspective), "search engine optimization" and "search-engine-optimization" are considered the same thing and return the same results. A search for "search_engine_optimization" on the other hand returns a TOTALLY different (and much smaller) result set.
yep, Domain Name play big role in seo, because when you optimize your website, so domain name will consider as name of your brand or company name, that's why that Domain name play 30% part in SEO.
So the domain name didn't help much unless you have exact match? From what I understand from this thread is that: domain name can help - but not as much as from back links and on-site SEO, unless your domain is an exact match with the desired keywords? And I should just use domain name that are catchy and easy to remember instead of the keywords-filled ones?
Domain has a critical role on SERPs even PR. I have wasted time and money by creating sites on irrelevant domains. Domain is almost everything for any online business. You can change anything on your site. Can you change its domain easily?