Using a keyword in your domain name....how important is this?
My mate who builds websites says it's no longer important in google's eyes. Is he right?
Nope, this has NEVER mattered. It will highlight in the natural search results on google but is only a keyword cross-reference response, not really to do with the ranking of nor position of the domain.
Proof is in google's own domain name. Google is a number and has nothing to do with search engines but has been branded into a household name and furthermore, a slang verb for the action of using their service.
More examples of top sites without keywords in their sites:
Amazon - ecommerce and nothing to do with the rain forrest.
Ebay - the top of the auction trading ecommerce game.
Twitter - same branding technique as google.
Facebook - slang term but nowhere referencing ' social networking community ' in the domain.
Target.com - offline market chain online, nothing to do with bullseyes or targets of any kind in their services, short of the stray dart board set. Nothing relevant in their domain as a keyword reference to what they offer.
Bottom line: Do your thing, theme your site, brand it like the companies have and give people something more to remember rather than a bland keyword and you will jump over the competition.
Proof of this: Commercial marketing since the 30's have has characters, off-set names, iconic spokespeople, catch phrases and slogans. Think of this from the aspect of the name of your commercial property/storefront that people are going to be visiting...don't worry about keywords in the url/domain so much.
You can handle that in your onpage content, titles and headers, as well as your links. If you can label your backlink, request that people give you a hyperlink with your keyword as the label of that link.
Example: If you are selling shampoo, you should have your link show up as ' shampoo ', not your site. The link address itself will give you the site reference...the power comes from associating that link label with your link on someone else's website...Google reads that as ' keyword link label/id ' + ' referenced backlink ' = authority link listing, due to someone else, other than you, on your site is now saying that your site is an authority for this keyword topic.
Hope that helps.
