Do Keyword Rich Domain Names Help With SEO?
There’s a thread over on High Rankings Forum titled Keyword and Domain Name. One of the members is asking if using a keyword rich domain name will get ranked purely on the domain name.
Based purely on the domain name, will screendoor.nz get ranked in the MSN and Google the same as a screendoor.com?
Would screen-door.nz be a better then screendoor.nz if the keyword screen door is used 1000 times per day and the keyword screendoor is only used 150 times per day?
What’s funny about this thread is the person asking the question gets an answer quite a few times, from some of the brightest minds in the industry mind you. However, he continues to argue that using a keyword rich domain name will help him regardless of what others tell him. He uses the following example…
I have read what you told me to read but..
when I put up www.skincare-city.com, it immediately went to the first page (approx the second listing) in MSN under skincare-city.
Of course he ranked well for the phrase “skincare-city”, but only because that’s a keyphrase no one has ever bothered to optimize for, let alone even use on their site because no one would ever search for that phrase. It even turns out that he even has a few incoming links using that exact keyphrase, maybe that helped.
Regardless, there’s no point in ranking for a keyword that will never be searched for.
So back to the question at hand. Based purely on the domain name will you get ranked any better for those keywords?
No!
Keywords in your domain name isn’t what gets you to the top.
A couple years ago using keywords in your domain name did help with your rankings, but that’s no longer true. You can probably thank the spammers for this once they started using keyword-keyword-keyword-keyword.com for domain names. And this is probably the one time I actually do thank the spammers, because having a domain name with keywords in it shouldn’t affect your rankings. Just because you own screendoors.com doesn’t mean you have the most relevant site for screen doors.
Now just to make myself clear so there’s no confusion I said that having keywords in your domain name helped in the past, not that it necessarily meant automatic top rankings.
There’s more to top rankings than just a domain name.
There’s also a lot of other factors you should be thinking about when registering a domain name. SEO should be the furthest thing from your mind at this point. After all SEO is just a small piece of the online marketing pie anyways.
Think about your business. Think about your branding. Think about your marketing plan. Think about your customers. Whatever you do don’t think about SEO, there’s plenty of time for that later.
What do you think? I am right or wrong?
Cameron Olthuis is the Founder of