Keyword order in domain name?

Does it make a huge difference?

[Simsi]

Hi guys

Let's say you sell "blue widgets" to the US market and had the opportunity to register "widgetsblue.com", is this a good buy in terms of potential SE ranking for your optimised term "blue widgets" do you think? It's obviously not as pretty as "bluewidgets.com" but assume that's not an option.

I do have an option: I could get "widget.net", which is 5 times the cost of "widgetsblue.co.uk". Is that a better deal as it combines easier brandability with a sibgular version of the prime keyword. That said, I suspect users search for the plural "widgets" more frequently.

Cheers

Simsi!

[edited by: Simsi at 8:46 am (utc) on Aug. 4, 2007]

[Quadrille]

bluewidgets is only a tiny, tiny, tiny bit better than tgrgtd.com or even piojkf.com [nb these are examples only - honest!]

widgetsblue is really no better than bluewidgets.

Conceivably, blue-widgets is marginally better than either, though a few might disagree.

It really doesn't matter much at all - much more important is a name that your visitors will see, understand, remember and want to visit - without sniggering. That's money in your pocket.

[Simsi]

I agree brand names are ideal - I'm a big fan of branding, but I've tried launching sites under cool brand names and keyword domains and, unless you sink a lot of dosh into marketing your brand name, or get a good viral going, there is no doubt that the latter gets you better results for first time visitors in the search engines.

Believe me I hate that principle, but I've seen it happen over and over so I'm adopting the "if you can't beat them, join them" approach. It beats going black-hat on a brand name anyway.

[Sharpseo]

Take into consideration that people are less likely to link to a website with a URL that looks spammy/keyword-stuffed.

[Tiebreaker]

A perfect keyword domain is not an alternative to a 'branding' domain - if you are selling blue widgets, what branding could be more easy to remember than bluewidgets.com?

In my opinion, keyword domains also outrank dfgheyrt.com every time - if the niche you are targeting is any way competetive.

[Tapolyai]

So, in order of most to least beneficial -

blue-widgets.com

bluewidgets.com

widgetsblue.com

example.com (catchy domain but no reference to niche)

Am I correct on this?

How much does such blue-widgets domain "worth", as it relates to ranking in SEs?

Once the example.com site reaches PR4, lots of links, would it worth it to 301 redirect the example.com domain to a blue-widgets domain?

If not, at what point it would not worth doing it? PR3 little inbound links; PR0, no links, ...?

[Quadrille]

At no point would it be worth relaunching on this issue - the damage would far, far, far outweigh any conceivable benefit - it is one of a couple of hundred items to think about for a new site, however.