Should Your Domain Name Include Your Keywords?
By Anna Johnson on April 18th, 2009One of the perennial questions asked by Internet marketers is whether or not to include keywords in their domain names. Is it desirable or essential for search engine optimization purposes? Will you lose out against competitors if you don’t have keywords in your domain name?
Rebecca Appleton recently addressed this issue in The Search Marketing Standard. In her article, she makes the point that while Internet marketers should aim to use keyword-based domain names for new websites, there is probably no need to abandon established brand name domains just because they don’t include the keywords you are targeting for search engine marketing purposes.
For search marketing purposes there are certainly some advantages in using a keyword-rich domain name.
With regard to search engine optimization (SEO) in particular, it helps to have keyword-rich anchor text in links to your website. Since a lot of people will link to your website using your URL (rather than other anchor text) you will get more ‘relevant link juice’ if your URL contains your targeted keywords.
For pay-per-click (PPC) advertising purposes, our testing (and I believe others’ testing) has shown that domain names that include keywords tend to attract more clicks. Presumably, having keywords in your domain is just more evidence to a search engine user that you have what they’re looking for.
Keyword-rich domains may also benefit from ‘type-it-in’ traffic – where someone types keywords into the browser (rather than search) bar and are directed to a specific website.
On the other hand, none of these are necessarily reasons to abandon a domain name if it doesn’t happen to incorporate the ideal keywords.
Major brands do just fine in the search engine listings (organic and paid) without having to use keyword-rich domain names. Borders doesn’t have ‘books’ in its name… Monster doesn’t have ‘job’ in its name… and NONE of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo or Live) have ‘search engine’ in their names.
And that’s really what building a brand is all about – earning such recognition and trust that the name itself commands a premium (in terms of trust, price, etc) among prospects.
Similarly, if you are building a brand – as we are doing here at Kikabink – there are plenty of other things you can do to build traffic via the search engines and otherwise without having to use a keyword-rich domain name.
BUT I will say that for the ‘little guy’ the task of building a brand and getting search engine traffic is probably easier with a keyword-rich domain name.
That’s certainly been our experience in relation to our niche websites. Not too long ago we actually tested a keyword-rich domain name against a keyword-rich domain name and noticed a substantial increase in clicks to the domain that included our targeted keywords.
All in all, I suggest opting for keyword-rich domains where practical… but not to abandon hope OR your domain name if you are building a brand and are willing to work a tad harder on the other elements of search marketing (and Internet marketing in general).
