Domain name choice - SEO advice

craptakular

craptakular

craptakular

Soldato
Joined
7 Jan 2007
Posts
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Sussex, UK
ok lets say I have the following keywords:

Basketball Finder

I already own the domains:

thebasketballfinder.com .co.uk .net .org .eu .info

Is the .com a good domain to use if basketball anf finder are the two keywords you are after?

I could buy the following:

basketball-finder.net but this is rubbish right?

I wanted basketballfinder.com but they are all bought and parked :/

I could buy basketballfind.net but these sounds terrible to a human right?

What I am asking is google going to meltdown if a domain is prefixed with a filler word, in this case "the"?
 
The domain name has a very small amount to do with SEO, I'd just go with the domain you like the best.

As you have the .com, I'd probably go with that
 
As said, the SEO impact of keywords in the domain is not as important as it was.

Domain names today are more user centric, so make it easy to type, intelligible, memorable. The top level domain is not hugely important either, but again, everyone knows .com, which is why it is the primary of many sites.
 
The domain name can actually be the most important aspect, it depends how you want to rank, if you want to rank for the keywords: fluffy kittens on rainbows, then there is no better domain you can buy than fluffykittensonrainbows.com.

Hyphens don't matter, as far as Google is concerned, as Google does not recognise/index non alpha numeric characters.

If your wanting to rank via content, then the domain name dosnt matter so much
 
If you already own the .co.uk .net .org .eu .info, I'd be tempted to drop the .info and .eu then the .com of that will be perfect.
 
Get the shortest and most memorable one if possible. If you have a domain with some history, use that instead though E.g. a domain a few years old, with some authority etc. If the domain has a keyword in then that's just a bonus, that give you a very minor benefit, if any.

Whilst Google does use keywords within the domain as a ranking factor, things have moved on a lot. Google now looks heavily at content quality, freshness, backlinks, social signals etc. I personally wouldn't be worrying about keywords within a domain at all.

TLD wise, I always say go with a .co.uk if you're aiming at the UK market and buy the .com version if possible too.
 
On this note, I'd say the domain plays a vital part in marketing and ranking the site, but not so much directly. If your domain is thebasketballfinder then people will generally use those words when linking to you from various sources which will affect specific keyword rank.

So it's positively manipulative from a SEO point of view to have a keyword rich domain, not necessarily directly influential however.
 
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