There is an ongoing debate whether a keyword in your domain name helps you rank higher. The truth is yes and no (isn’t everything yes and no these days?)
URL in domains would be something like: www.wicked-shoes.com.
Fact is, the keyword (KW) in the domain itself DOES NOT help you rank higher. However, the KW indirectly helps you. Here’s how.
When other web sites link to you sometimes they just link to your web site, either the URL or the domain name. So for us it would be distinctseo as the link or https://www.distinctseo.com/. If someone links to me with distinct seo thinking it’s just the site link, it would actually gain a benefit from having the KW ‘seo’ linked to me.
For the shoes example someone would link (perhaps) with: wicked-shoes. In this case I’d get a benefit for the work wicked, shoes, and wicked shoes. So it does pay off to have a KW in your domain.
But wait, there’s more.
In normal business practice is makes ZERO sense to buy a domain for KW purposes only. In fact, the single most important factor you have online is your BRAND. As such BUY domains with the purpose of branding yourself and not with the purpose of getting indirect or residual search engine benefit. BRANDING is the name of the game when it comes to domains.
Hey, thanks for commenting on my question over at seo chat where I asked about should I take .com with – or .org domain, both whith my main keywords in the domain name.
Now, I’m reading what you said here, and I totaly understand what you are saying. If I want to rank for “cheap widgets” and I have a domain name xyz.com, I need to get links with that exact fraze as anchor text.
1. wouldn’t google see that as problem, me geting links with “cheap widgets” instead of xyz as anchor?
2. wouldnt’ my competitor who owns cheapwidgets.com be in advantage over me for that?
Thanks!
You have to think about it as a natural user. Sometimes they only link to you with your domain. But other times they’re writing something similar to what you did and they link to your resource. They’ll link with whatever anchor text they want. Google uses anchor text as a key factor in determining the primary keywords for your target page to rank for.
Your competitor ‘might’ have an advantage, but in reality it all boils down to links, and whether you have a domain name with the KW or not, in the long run, shouldn’t matter if you work hard at creating better content then your competitor.
Worry about having a brandable domain, not one with keywords.