Of course a nonsensical keyword rich domain can be created. But will these domains be listed with SE’s if they were used for the sole purpose of re-directing? I read somewhere that the SE will dismiss these domain names because they only contain duplicate content. If 301’s can not be used this way, what about creating multiple keyword rich domain names and then having a “Click to Enter” link on the landing page, linking to the main brand name page?
Thank you, Bob

I think that may be a fallacious distinction. Whether the benefit of kw-in-the-URL is direct or indirect, the actual correlation is strong

Now do you have the relevant content for that keyword match? if so then you are very very likely to rank on the very first page of google and better still in Yahoo. I can give you several examples of very basic websites I personally own, and only after 2 weeks my sites are ranking either no. 1 or on the very first page of google. I just launched CannesFilms.tv only recently and its already ranking first page, DiamondsRetail.com is no 1 on yahoo when you enter those keywords and that site is a parked content site! Companies who overlook the value of owning keyword domain names will find out later that they will pay extremely dearly on online for advertising and wastage on SEO that dosen’t always add up. Look at it this way, in the conventional world, its about location, location, location! The entire web is pretty much built around keywords which is why people buy them and that is primarily how people search online. Only very very big brands like google, ibm etc enjoy the priviledge of direct navigation 90% of the time. When you look through your local yellow pages for services, you look by category and then you select what looks mostly prominent before the basic listings.

It works the same online, just ask the guys who own londonapartment.com or londonapartment.co.uk, they both enyoy very high rankings and conversions with those keywords. If businesses fail to capture assets that can naturally leverage their brands for the forseeable future, then they only have themselves to blame and will lose out to their competitors. If I were an SEO specialist, I will advise my clients to acquire keyword domains that match the services or products and then help them with developing unique landing pages and associate the brand!

Finally, notice how yahoo now uses character recognition to help with your searches. Fundamentally it’s about the keywords backed with authoritative content, to buck this trend may end up costing you very dearly!

That’s an interesting case – did the domain start out with no backlinks on launch in 2007?

I’ve had completely new domains (made up terms or terms that aren’t usually associated with each other like “fusednation”) not rank first page on Google (for the domain term) on launch (no backlinks, or just 1 backlink) for a while. It’s interesting that your domain ranked for a competitive term without backlinks. Are you certain the domain didn’t have any kind of history before you picked it up or there were no other contributing factors?

I suppose on one level it makes sense for a domain to rank for “domain name” based on something more than just links – otherwise we’d see loads of sites ranking for “microsoft”, “bbc” and so on when they really shouldn’t be. But I still feel from a business point of view that search engines should (and do) distinguish between brand vs keywords. BBC.co.uk *deserves* to rank for “BBC” – Jobs.com doesn’t necessarily *deserve* to rank for “jobs” if you know what I mean? With the huge increase in keyword domain purchases and the use of hyphenated and other keyword domain variations over the past 5 years, search engines can’t realistically offer the same importance to keyword.com as they do to brand.com.

Aaron’s post that covered this subject recently does make the point of quoting Matt Cutts saying Google “does give some weight to keywords in domain names”. But I gave “some” money to charity last year – that doesn’t necessarily quantify how generous I am does it? Not very as it happens!

I think the important comment from Matt is; ” Google does give keywords in the URL a certain amount of weight, but you don’t need it in order to rank“. Regardless of opinions and different experiences on the subject (which don’t necessarily need to be conflicting points of view – it’s a varied industry with lots of factors after all), keeping perspective is important.

Going back to the point of my initial post – to counter a statement made that “keywords in a domain name are the most important ranking factor” I’d say this still isn’t true (and never will be!). There are many more important factors. Can keywords in the domain help though? Sure.

I’d be interest in hearing any more experiences with / without keyword domains. It’s not easy to compare and contrast to come up with a definitive statement of value as there are many other influencing factors but it makes for an interesting discussion.

I’ve got one main site using a keyword domain and a few other smaller ones. The main one has ranked since launch (number 1) for 7 years now without any issue. But one of my main gripes with keyword domains (and this is entirely my fault I admit) is that at the time I was a little green around the edges and only registered the .com – couple of months later someone picked up the .co.uk. It always stuck in my head that this would be a drawback the day I wanted to spend some serious money on promoting the site (i.e. moving it on from a hobby site – albeit a high traffic one – to a business). That’s my main (personal) argument for brand over keyword domains.

Scott