Do Keywords In Your Domain Matter?

Still think you have to use keywords to get traffic to your site? Not necessarily, it is completely possible to succeed without certain keywords in your domain name. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google are just a few examples of successful companies who have chosen to not use any keywords in their domain name. In the past people and companies have paid up to $17 million dollars for a domain name even though the average person like you and I can buy a domain name for around $10 right now.

It used to make sense to pay in excess of millions of dollars for a certain domain for exposure, if your company was big enough. Google used to give more value to the keywords in your domain URL which in turn lead to you, the site owner getting more traffic because your URL uses hot keywords that lots of people are searching for. Most of the sites you can think of off hand don’t have any keywords within their domain. While keywords can help you show up in a search engine, a “brandable” URL is a lot easier for people to remember later on (ie. Facebook). It is definitely possible to succeed with a URL without keywords, as I said earlier companies you tend to remember don’t use keywords in their URL. If there are 50 different sites all with a certain word such as “iPad” or “Android” in the URL, it’s going to be harder to remember a certain site or tell it apart from all of the similar sites that are out there.

It’s better to have a domain name that will set you apart from the rest of the pack, and is memorable enough that will keep people coming back without much research or thought to find your site. Although keywords definitely were a big deciding factor in days past, we should consider changing our thinking. Would it be better for someone to find your site by chance and maybe not be back to it after the initial visit, or use a very brandable URL that they are sure to remember for years to come?