Picking a domain...

[Jeremy N]

I've been reading up on it lately and would love to hear some opinions on the subject.

 

[Shane Deubell]

Something simple and easy to remember, preferably your name somehow.

 

[Jeremy N]

How much does key words play a role in the domain?

 

[Royal Man]

How much does key words play a role in the domain?

A few or just one keyword will mainly help your prospects. Not SEO or positioning.More for marketing. So keep it short and easy.

 

[TomKing]

Here are some links you should be looking at.
Matt Cutts is someone to watch.
Hope this helps.
Top journal to follow
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/...ng-search-rankings-myth-according-bing/86379/

BINGS viewon the subject
http://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/2014/01/15/domain-name-importance-in-ranking/

Top SEO site to follow
http://moz.com/learn/seo/domain

Matt Cutts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH3bGzAgNuc

 

[Shane Deubell]

How much does key words play a role in the domain?

That's a fred/hoody type question, i was thinking of it from practical view.

Cutts will give great by the book answers but you have to ask someone who does this for a living to learn what happens in real life.
What the G-man tells us they want and what happens is not always the same.

I believe matt cutts said it doesnt play a big role anymore but have no clue how true that is.

 

[GCCLee]

Waiting to hear Hoodys take on it : )


Fred's always too busy : (

 

[Jeremy N]

Waiting to hear Hoodys take on it : )


Fred's always too busy : (

Me too!

 

[Johnny]

Me too!

Me three!

 

[Hoody]

Geographical targeted keywords have little to no weight anymore. No SEO value either. To give you some insight into what Google prefers, think more about creating a brand online. I'd have to dig up some stories/press releases to show you what I mean - but there have been some fortune 500 companies that got the temporary hammer from Google for violating TOS or their guidelines but because they have such a powerful BRAND Google forgives them after a few days. It may also have to do with the fact that spend a lot of money in ads but Google will never admit that. Smaller businesses would just be de-indexed and you'd have to start over.

In short - focus on creating a brand through your domain that you can easily market. Are people going to remember carpet-cleaning-city.com ? Probably not.

Google will not also admit that brand names get higher preference than smaller businesses in the search results too but they do. A lot of it has to do with how much SEO has changed and how much it is still going to continue to change. What I will tell you is links still have value and you should still try building broad link profiles, but try to get your company name/brand in the spotlight in local news medias. Build a strong social media presence too.

Ask your local paper to do an article about maintaining their carpet and other carpet, tile, stone, upholstery related things every couple of months.

 

[GCCLee]

You had me at Geographical : )

 

[Vivers]

Exact matching domain names or similar don't help anymore. As Shane said get something that states what you do or lets them know you're local and is easy to remember.

 

[WillS]

We used our company name for the domain and purchased other keyword domains that direct to our site. IE: carpetcleaninginlasvegas.com naturaldry.net .org etc... We submit those sites to the search engines to, noticed our competitors doing this and it produced decent results on rankings for them.