In 2005 nobody would have argued that having the most relevant keywords stuffed into your domain name was worth more that just about anything when working the SERPS. You could buy thousands of dollars worth of links and never achieve the same results that domain name keyword stuffing would do.
Today that is different. If you take a look through the SERPS for most keywords, you’ll find about one third of the domains have keywords. Compare that with 2005 and I would imagine that 75% of the domains in the top 10 had keywords stuffed into them.
So does the domain name really matter? Not to me. I still own a lot of domains that are stuffed that I purchased over the last few years, but I’m finding that they rank just as well as domain names without any keywords (or words).
So if you have the choice between a brandable keyword domain such as Flickr, Google, or Technorati, choose that over a keyword stuffed domain.
It is generally considered that a keyword rich domain name will be more successful than a non keyword rich domain name…..provided all other factors are equal!
I’ve always thought that having keywords in the domain name was a huge advantage. thats what all the SEO programs tell you.
Jacques, I have to agree with you, however, I think that is what Brandon is saying: having a ‘brandable’ domain like “Google” may cause you a loss in keyword-related traffic, but would be more easily remembered if seen in a magazine than say “Professional Search Engine Inc.”
On lower competition keywords, having the keyword in the domain definetly helps.
I’d always thought that “keyword stuffing” was putting a high density of keywords into page content and META tags.
I think having keywords in the domain name is definitely an advantage, as is putting them in title and heading tags.
I think it’s good to vary them up a bit though, create what Aaron Wall calls a “semantically related cloud” – this way the SE can get the picture of what your site is about, but the density of one particular phrase as opposed to other related content is not too skewed.
Well, my domain name was second choice but it totally sums up what my site is about and what I do – so I’m glad I ended up with it. I think it must have been fate…. spooky!
I agree that keyword stuffing is less relevant and having a domain with one of your keywords in it makes little difference. I do however think that you need to have your keywords repeated upto 10 times in the body of the text. However you should always write content for readers, not for search engines