keywords in domain name

Often we are asked if the keyword(s) you are targeting should be in your domain name.

The answer we provide is three fold:

1: what would your customers want to see/ would your customers click on the domain in the search engine results pages?

2: what type of domain name can you obtain/ how many dashes would be in that domain?

3: how do you wish to brand your site?

Now pulling all these answers together and adding some SEO ingredients may start to help you. Certainly for google (and in the UK this is the only search engine to target as they have something like 90% search share) google state that the more dashes in a domain or file name (ie: the name that the actual page is on like domain.com/mypage.html) results in a lower trust score. So if you have a domain such as low-cost-personal-loans-low-interest-rate.com then certainly google will not put much faith in this domain as a viable business.

This is pure spammy looking to humans and the search engines - and would your potential customers click on such a name? Certainly a domain such as personalloans.com or personal-loans.com is far better if you can obtain such a name and is a) easier to remember and b) looks more trustworthy.

Now, certainly in MSN and to a degree Yahoo do place emphasis on the words in the domain and the page title you are targeting - you just need to delist the spammy looking length of such an item.

You certainly don’t need to load up a domain with all of your keywords as you can have these in other pages. Just be careful what you add then you can start to brand what you have - for example: business.com or loans.co.uk - all very simple and effective.

It is likely to be slightly harder to begin a new business with a domain that doesn’t have your keywords but then you have directories in your site eg: domain/keyword/file.html to play with and add in your keywords to help you along your way.

So my advice ? If you can get a domain that has a maximum of three words without dashes (search engines can read the words within a domain without dashes) then go for that - even if it just contains your main keyword and has other trailing words (ie: total, direct, all, free etc) - go to godaddy and do a search for your main term on a domain and see what the suggestion tool comes up with - that will help you choose a good domain name for your keywords.