Is it worth it to change a website domain for better keyword match?

[smithaa02]

Say the money keyword we are targeting is California Widgets. We own widgets.com, our competitor owns calwidgets.com but we are thinking about buying the domain californiawidgets.com (which doesn't rank now but that's because the current owner doesn't do anything with the site).

All these domains are quite old...would it be foolish to just move our site over to californiawidgets.com and 301 our old pages to the new site? If one does acquire a better keyword fit domain what is the best way to use it? Just link to your main domain? Does it not have that much value to start with?

Also, for experimentation purposes we are considering acquiring another californiawidgets.x that is available from a registrar. The idea being that our keyword phrase is so competitive yet none of our main competition is using it as an exact domain...just seems like there may be potential here. The main suffixes .org/.com are taken but a number of minor suffixes like .bz and .biz remain. What's the word on non-.com websites when it comes to SEO?

[netmeg]

If you have old domains with links and history and traffic, you're not going to get enough of a boost out of switching to a keyword domain to make it worth while, in my opinion. I mean, if you're doing it for branding reasons, because it's easier to remember or otherwise better for your brand, that's one thing (I walked one of my clients through something like that and it's worked out great) but just for SEO purposes? I wouldn't.

That's not to say you couldn't come up with some kind of a related use for the keyword domain, that would *support* your existing site. That's probably what I would look for first.

As for the TLDs, I only deal in .com. That's the default, that's the assumption, and in my opinion, buying something like .bz or .biz is only going to end up sending some part of your traffic to the .com holder.

[HuskyPup]

^ ^ ^ What netmeg said.

We have several keyword .com domain names however they are used for branding purposes only in that we hold the registered trade names for them as well. Even though they all rank #1 across all search engines it always surprises me how little traffic they actually get, usually about 100 uniques per day and this is for the most popular widget in my industry.

Your ideas are quite a few years old to be honest and I wouldn't bother picking up other ccTLDs unless you are going to develop them. I'm actually dropping names rather than renewing since I know I'm never going to do anything with them.

I use several different gTLDs and ccTLDs owing to the global nature of our business however if you are located in the USA then I wouldn't bother with anything other than you already have. Of course if the names are really cheap you could always url-forward them to your main site for keyword type-ins and for a 100 Dollars a year for 10-12 names it stops your competitors using them!

[netmeg]

Yah, I have clients with hundreds of domains that are either forwarded or just not being used at all, just to keep them out of the hands of the competitors.

[potentialgeek]

I'm currently seeing Google give a lot of respect (more than usual) to keyword domains. It may have to do with a Vince Update tweak. I don't know how long this will last. Cutts I believe said keywords in domains might not get so much value in the future, or that they would reevaluate them:

[seroundtable.com...]

You may want to experiment with a domain to see what results you get, or wait until Google has made a clear new decision. Bing/Yahoo seem to like keyword domains.

Hopefully Google will in the future, if it does not already, make distinctions in its algo between perfect matches and keyword-loaded/stuffed domains (usually full of hyphens), which are typically the spammers' signature.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I'm not typing in californiawidgets repeatedly, cawidgets maybe, so from a user perspective it's a bit long.

As for Google and exact match domains they aren't as powerful as they once were and you do need to gain authority for the exact name before it will be respected as such. I'm not entirely sure that's even possible on city names anymore, you might want to cruise over to the geo-domains club and ask some big name city.com owners.

[MrSavage]

My observation is that keyword matches only matter when you aren't in anything remotely competitive. When it goes get more competitive, that keyword domain value is as solid as a wet paper bag. In the past I would say it's a great idea, but now, no way. Sure there are examples of keyword domains in the SERPS, but again, consider what else is around in that niche.

With all this said, how much stock can you put into Google right now? Sure it might appear that the value is slipping in keyword domains, but what happens in six months. Don't lose sight also that Bing does carry a bit more weight in them. That said, it's not worth basing the future on Bing getting more popular.

For myself, I might have a domain with one or two of the keywords, but brand is more important to me moving forward. Greenwidgets.com isn't exactly what I would describe as a brand I'll remember.

It's a hard call, but investing big in a great keyword domain is an utter waste of money as of October 28, 2011. Could change yes. Then again so could Google's search market share.