Just how important are keywords within the domain name?

I was just wondering if that was really extremely important, because I was thinking that it may not be. Like ebay is top ranked, and no one is searching for ebay, they are searching for auction sites or individual products, or cheap something or other. I may be wrong, but I think long term success is more about the domain name being recognizable, catchy, and that users like the name.

I have a site selling spy gadgets and other random electronics, the domain is thestealthypanda, and traffic is getting better everyday. It seems that people search specific products, say searching for rc helicopters, more than they search for product categories, like spy gadgets. Am I totally wrong on this, or is it making sense?

Take and example apple.com there is nowhere on that page says laptop but when you search for it apple comes up at the top. No you do not have to have keyword in the URL, but it will make it much, much easier and faster to rank if you have a keyword in the domain, title, and description.

A keyword within a domain name makes seo easy. there is a datacentre called the planet and is quite popular, but they have done a lot of promotions for that domain that since there is no keyword about servers or a datacentre on their domain, it doesn't really matter. but for small players and beginners, having a keyword domain can make things really easy

having and EMD (exact match domain) definitely helps but i look at it two ways. it kind of depends on the site your building, if you looking to build a brand an EMD doesnt really work, but if your doing an MFA site then it will definitely help in terms of seo and what not

it is true that if you want to create some semblance of a brand down the road, a catchy name has to be fragmented and used as a domain name. But if you are too concerned about achieving serp faster, having kws in domain name is paramount.

alex-19841 said:

Take and example apple.com there is nowhere on that page says laptop but when you search for it apple comes up at the top. No you do not have to have keyword in the URL, but it will make it much, much easier and faster to rank if you have a keyword in the domain, title, and description.

Click to expand...

Hahahaha, comparing apple (one of the most popular websites in the world) to his is classic.

Didn't Google just take out a patent on searching for EMD's? So obviously they take these into consideration (which everyone knew already) so it's always a good idea to nab an EMD in a niche.

It may help get ranked faster, but I think it could hurt in the long run. The search engines seem to be getting better and better at indexing based on actual content. Google is anyway. Search tasty apple on google and it shows you stuff about apple recipes, and all of the top results are sites that are not necessarily about apples but the pages it links to are about apples. I think keywords in page titles is more important than in the home page.

You're right, it's not important.
Get 260,000,000 incoming links and you can rank for whatever you want.

Look at it like this. Unless your site is really amazing, you're going to get very few natural incoming links. And you'll want to take advantage of those.

So if your site name is sneakyboy.com, and people actually want to link to you, you're probably going to get a lot of incoming links as 'sneakyboy' 'sneaky boy', etc. Like "I get all my spy stuff from sneaky boy"

But if you are using keywords, you benefit two ways.
1. Your domain alone will have a little bit of juice, even if it's not a EMD. SpyGadgetsStore.com will still hold a little juice for "Spy Gadgets".
2. When people link to you, they're more likely to link to the keyword.
"I get all my gets from Spy Gadgets Store". Or if you do what I do, I eliminate the extra keyword. So my header/title/etc woudln't have the word store in it. So all people would see is "Spy Gadgets", so hopefully when they link to me, that's how they link me, Spy Gadgets.

I had one more way but it slipped my mind as I was typing #2

That is true.... Would buying a domain with the keywords in it, and using it as a redirect to the store, would it still give the same juice while keeping the public name the same? I want a site that starts small, and then grows into something with 260,000,000 incoming links. It sounds like a better goal then something that makes a big bang onto the search engines and then fizzles out later.
One thing I've noticed over the past few years is that when you are making a site because you like something and want to share it with the world, for some reason it ranks without even trying. When you obsess over getting everything optimized, it seems to not do as well. I guess the most important thing is just saving a huge advertising budget, then when you're popular enough seo won't matter.

alex-19841 said:

Take and example apple.com there is nowhere on that page says laptop but when you search for it apple comes up at the top. No you do not have to have keyword in the URL, but it will make it much, much easier and faster to rank if you have a keyword in the domain, title, and description.

Click to expand...

I agree.. you can generally rank for keywords by doing the correct research and implementing the right strategies, but i have noticed buying domain names that were related to the keyword i was trying to rank for got me faster rankings.

Keyword in domain is a big plus and puts you a step ahead of the pack when it comes to ranking.

I think the whole EMD craze started with the micro niche sites. These sites have very few pages or maybe even a single page. Without the exact match domain you would be at a severe disadvantage at ranking these sites with thin content against more authoritative sites like amazon, ebay, and youtube.

An authority site can rank for tons of long tail keywords that are in no way related to the main domain. Just look at squidoo or the huffington post. The shear number of indexed pages on sites like these create internal link juice that can be automatically inherited by the new pages.

You could start a website like purplemonkeytesticles.com and add thousands of pages of random content. Over time with the right internal link structuring and off and on page seo. You could start ranking for keywords in niches like insurance, business, or even baby clothes.

So in other words.... keyword domains are not necessary but they give you a head start.

Well thats something to think about, thanks for the input everyone. Its movie time with the wife, so I'm off.

Hi,

Having a keyword in the domain name boosts your SEO towards better ranking but doesn't mean one can't rank with a certain keyword not in the domain.

Cheers,
ytterium