1. David Murphy

    Owner at Head Higher

    18 March 2009 17:24pm

    David Murphy

    Hi, I have the opportunity to buy a domain name that is made up of two key words which I would like one of my websites to get good seo rankings and be "found" upon.

    My thought was to buy this domain and point it at my site but there is a hefty premium attached to buying the domain name (from one of those agencies that squats on a lot of names).

    So , does having a site/domain with great keywords for the market we want to address help rankings or should we just try and do links, articles etc (as per the seo we are trying)?

    Many thanks for any input!

    Dave

  2. Haydon Rouse

    Owner at Haydon Rouse Consultancy Limited

    19 March 2009 16:00pm

    Haydon Rouse

    It's a tricky one to answer.  It obviously depends on the cost of the name and whether it will give you a ROI.  Has the domain been used previously?  Who by and for what?  Does it have any links?

    Are you already ranking well for your chosen terms/keywords?  If you are, then it's going to be difficult (not impossible) for a competitor to overtake you if they were to buy the name.

    If you're not going to develop a "sister" site on the new name then you're just buying it to stop a competitor from owning the name.

    There isn't any benefit from my experiece of buying a name that doesn't have any links or listings and just pointing it to an existing site.

    If budget isn't too much of an issue then buy the name and create another site.  Twice the marketing power, double the chances of a visitor finding your site/offering.

    A domain name (containing keywords) +site/content will help rankings.

  3. Bogac GURGUN

    CEO at Incerta Internet Advertising and Information Technologies

    21 March 2009 14:08pm

    Bogac GURGUN

    Dear David,

    It is a one way to have a listing in search engines but not enough only. Pls keep in mind I told "listing in search engines" not "heigher rank". I have couple of clients that I have bought some domains to support our SEO project for them. It supported the ranking. But I believe it did %5-10 percent effect out of the whole SEO work.

    You should think the whole, buy a domain, create good strategy, and do some SEO work. When you tie up all it will give result.

    If you need to ask, pls do not hesitate to contact.

    Good luck...

    Bogac GURGUN

    Incerta
    Digital Marketing Strategies

    p. (İstanbul) + 9 0216 414 6200   |   p. (London) + 44 020 7193 3522
    m. (İstanbul) + 9 0532 769 9971

    e: info@incerta.com
    w: http://www.incerta.com/

  4. John Patric

    Business developer at http://www.allbusinessonline.com

    25 March 2009 09:41am

    Avatar-blank-50x50

    imho keyword related domain name is good way to get some extra users from search engines, etc. But You must think about disadvanteges: maybe Your business brand is strong and you dont need to create new, "keyword related"brand to sell Your services.

    sincerely,
    John Patric
    www.allbusinessonline.com

  5. Lawrence L

    Freelance Web Consultant at architxt.net

    30 March 2009 09:47am

    Lawrence L

    For couple of sites I've worked on I developed brands around as SEO friendly names.

    The benefit is that inbound links will necessarily carry key words.

    Of course your site's name and domain don't have to match. You can have a site called 'Red Apple' on a www.whatever.com domain. But I would expect search engines to take into consideration key words in the domain name too. 

    As far as my own efforts are concerned, the first site I mentioned was included in dmoz.org with a misspelt title (eg. 'redapples'). I emailed the editor and had it corrected ('red apples') and that made a big difference to Google rankings.

  6. Abhishek Rungta

    Founder / CEO at Indus Net Technologies

    01 April 2009 03:47am

    Abhishek Rungta

    Hi David,

    In my experience, keywords in the domain name does make a positive difference. I was recently optimizing a site for keywords and a domain name with the keywords helped me get ranking much easily.

    My attempt to get ranking for a similar site (in fact an older site) which did not have the keyword too much longer and it was not that stable due to the competitive factor. But the one with keyword held up for long.

    I am however not sure if a 301 redirect or a domain pointing will make a difference or not. I have never tried that.

    Abhishek

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