Importance of Keywords in Domain

How important is it for keywords to be in the domain?

Say for example I want to rank for a particular phrase "how to make donuts".

And you had the domain "makedonuts.com".

Would you rank better if you created a subdomain "howto" and thus it would be "howto.makedonuts.com"? or maybe even a subfolder "makedonuts.com/howto"?

What do you guys think?

Keyword in domain helps but you can rank with out it... I have done it several times so i am sure about it...

I think your domain name is enough to target for keyword, no need to make subdomain or directory which you showed...

Sub-domains are treated as their own website, its allwas good seo practice to have your main keyword i.e donuts in the domain name google tends to relatively favor those websites.

Sly.Niches said:

Sub-domains are treated as their own website, its allwas good seo practice to have your main keyword i.e donuts in the domain name google tends to relatively favor those websites.

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There's no proof for that, I believe that people paying attention to those details (keyword in domain) tend to do a better job on their overall seo and that's why those sites are ranking better

Google gives a lot of creditibility to it because it tells Google right off the domain name what your site is about. But you can still rank without it. That's why people buy expired domains because of the existing backlinks and domain age which Google also factors in its algorithm.

Shaadea said:

There's no proof for that, I believe that people paying attention to those details (keyword in domain) tend to do a better job on their overall seo and that's why those sites are ranking better

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There is 100% proof of "that" I have tested it many times. No its not everything but it sure as hell helps a lot and the more exact your keyword is in the url the more it helps. I own over 1000 sites my self not to mention all the site my clients own and we all use the keyword in the url strategy not only to rank on page one but #1 on hundreds of keywords.

Philgood

What about suffixes and prefixes if the main keyword isn't availble for example if you were targeting make money and makemoney.com or makemoney.org was already taken would howtomakemoney.com or makemoneynow.com or makemoneytoday.org be ok to out rank the guy with the exact match domain?


Also for subdomains if for example you were targeting a number of brands would you choose a generic top level word and as the main domain .com or .org and then make each subdomain relevant to the brand for example:

keywordresearch.com/.org would be your top level keyword

then each subdomain would look like this:

marketsamurai.keywordresearch.com
micronichefinder.keywordresearch.com
traffictravis.keywordresearch.com
etc etc


one last question...

Whats's the ideal length of a domain in terms or words or characters? If say for example the target keyword is 4 words long and gets enough traffic to put the work in is a 4 word domain ok? Whats the maximum you guys would go 3, 4, 5 words in length or total number of characters; 50, 100, 150?