Pure keyword.com domains

How much does this help for Google?

[pauldmitri]

If you own a domain that is just simply keyword.com, without anything but the keyword itself in the domain does this give you much of a boost in terms of SEO?

In other words, all things being equal, if you had two sites, one was widgets.com and one was widgetsonline.com or amazingwidgets.com, would widgets.com have any preference on the search engines by virtue of the quality of the domain alone?

[Lobo]

Not at all in my experience ...

even typing in 'widgets' would not take you to widget.com if it wasn't ranked anyway ...

What it can give you is the occasional type in traffic, if someone thinks i'm looking for widgets, so maybe I should try just putting in widgets.com in the address bar..

it's not a search engine help ..

[leadegroot]

on the contrary!
I have one domain that is allmywidgets.com and I have endless traffic from the engines for people who type in allmywidgets (one word) (no, I dont know why they do that either!) but I have only a limited amount of traffic from msn and yahoo for 'all my widgets' searches (without quotes), and NONE from google (I have to find time to work on the backlinks for that one!)
So, yes, the domain name does make a difference - and I wish I had bought the hyphenated domain ;)

[pauldmitri]

I guess I would think that the engines would give you some kind of brownie points for being the guy who has the keyword.com domain when other people are searching for that keyword. As though it would confer some kind of extra authority.

[Lobo]

no that's my point you do not, search engines have absolutely no interest in the fact you own widgets.com they are only interested in how your site performs, the content, the link density etc.. everything that normally increase PR ...

but as leadegroot points out you can pick up traffic from people who type in the domain ...

There are no brownie points :)

[pauldmitri]

As an experiement, I bought a domain that was the name of a disease state. I submitted the site to Google and within three weeks I was ranked and it's several months later. The domain has no good content on it, some of the links are dead, it has no inbound links that I know of and all it has is an affiliate banner on the bottom. This thing totally avoided the sandbox and has held tight this whole time.

[edited by: Webwork at 2:09 am (utc) on April 11, 2006]
[edit reason] Charter [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[leadegroot]

but as leadegroot points out you can pick up traffic from people who type in the domain ...

Not quite what I meant - this is traffic from the engines, where people type in the exact domain name, without the tld - they are typing allmywidgets into the search field at the engines.

[pauldmitri]

If what Leaegroot is saying is true, this WOULD indicated that if you have the pure keyword.com domain, then you will get a lot of traffic from the engines when people search for that keyword, without tht TLD.

Although it could be that in his case, with the domain being allmywidgets.com instead of widgets.com, there are not that many other instances of allmywidgets out there for the engines to even find in the first place, and if the term were simply 'widgets' there are presumably lots of other SEOs shooting at the term and therefore a lot more clutter to cut through on your way to the top.

[arran]

Keyword domain = keyword rich anchor text.

That's the main benefit.

arran.

[Kufu]

It certainly helps to have your domain matchthe keywords exactly. However, the site has to have the content and links to support it.

Of course there may be exceptsions as pauldmitri pointed out; but I would be willing to bet that the keyword used in that case was not competitive at all.

I rank #1 for a parked domain that has just a 'coming soon' banner on there. But it is a name that I made up (which ended up actually being a last name).

[ChrisBolton]

I think keyword domain names do make a difference.

I recently made a model portfolio for a client that had next to no HTML text in the body whatsoever.

I originally hosted the site at my domain which is content rich and has a good few inbound links, for testing purposes and to let the client see the progress.

The url then was www.mysite.com/hername/index.htm

Through a link on the site this page found it's way on to the search engines and ranked seventh for a search on her name. (Her name gets a mention on quite a few sites after apperaing in FHM UK).

Literally days later after her site was published and submitted to the search engines, it ranked 1st place, higher than the old page which was still online and part of a content rich website.

the new url was www.hername.com.

This made me think that it does make a difference.

Maybe it could have been down to other circumstances which I was not aware of.

Regards.

[leadegroot]

I think it is one factor that gives a tiny boost, not a big one.
Worth taking into account when choosing a domain name, but not worth stressing about.