Knowledgebase Domain Names Optimizing

Are Keywords in Domain Names Important?

Two years after designing my movie related web site ChasingtheFrog.com, I seriously began to question whether or not my domain name choice was negatively affecting both my site's reputation and its collective search engine ranking. After all, my site wasn't about chasing after little green amphibians, it was about movies and no keywords relating to movies were in the domain name. So, if I had called the web site MoviesFrog.com, would that have been a more search engine friendly choice? How much would including the word 'Movies' in my domain have helped my rankings? Did I make a huge mistake? To answer these questions, let's take a look at it from the perspective of the search engines.

Do Search Engines Look at Keywords in Domain Names?

The simple answer to this question is yes. Perform some searches in Google for example. I did a search for the highly sought after teen queen Lindsay Lohan (shown at left). Notice that in Google the keyword phrase 'lindsay lohan' appears in bold green in the domain names. Thus, it is no secret that keywords in this area are taken into consideration, yet it is not as obvious as to how much importance the engines place on such words. There are numerous articles online claiming that keyword-rich domain names are critical to top search engine placement. I couldn't disagree more, because if this was true then having a successful website would come down to choosing the right domain name. It would be a no brainer for spammers.

How Much Value Do Search Engines Place on Keyword Rich Domains?

In reality, search engines don't place very much value on keywords in domain names. Tom Wilde, General Manager of Search Services at Lycos confirmed this by admitting in a recent article that domain names are a small factor in the Lycos algorithm due to their potential for being abused. This holds true across all of the major engines. Although domains are almost always an included factor in determining search engine rank, they are not weighed nearly as heavily as the keywords in your title tags and page content. Off site criteria can also affect SE rank. Some web pages rank highly simply because there are keywords in the hyperlinks that point to the site. Abusing this idea is referred to as "Google Bombing" in the Web Blog community. Any number of these other factors can explain why you might find sites with keyword rich domain names ranking high.

Should I Pick a Keyword Rich Domain Name or Not?

Don't let keywords in your domain name be the overriding factor in your name selection. My web site, ChasingtheFrog.com, has been online for over five years, and it has done very well in the engines with its non-keyword rich web site name. In fact, no single keyword could ever encompass all of the content on each individual page of my web site. A theme of ChasingtheFrog is its focus on the real people behind movies based on actual events. For example, I have pages on everyone from Notre Dame Football standout Rudy Ruettiger to Oskar Schindler, the inspiration for Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List.

It wouldn't be economical for me to break up my website into individual sites for each movie, like RudyRuettigerLife.com or RealOskarSchindler.com. Even if these sites had keyword rich content (page copy), the optimized domain names would have very little effect on my search engine ranking anyway. Therefore, my web site domain name choice has worked fine for my web site. Also, there are thousands of 'movie-this' and 'movie-that' sites out there. The name ChasingtheFrog enables me to stand out from the pack, much like the content of my site.

Over the years I ended up branding the name ChasingtheFrog into my site and its logo, which includes a frog wearing 3D glasses. I also created a definition for the phrase 'Chasing the Frog' which can be read here. My domain name choice has become a big part of my site. I even dress up the frog in the logo from time to time to correlate with different movie releases.

In the end, what you call your domain should depend more on what your site is about (its content), rather than simply choosing a name for the sake of search engine optimization. In most cases, choosing a good domain name that reflects the theme of your website will often contain one or more keywords anyway. Take this website for example; it's called SearchEngineKnowledge.com, a name chosen to describe the main purpose of the web site, which is to share our search engine knowledge with other web developers.

When Shouldn't I Pick a Keyword Rich Domain?

When developing sites for existing companies, it is usually best to use the company's name as the domain name. For example, Universal Pictures likely gets much more traffic with the domain UniversalPictures.com than they would have with the name GoodMovieStudio.com. This is because a large number of people are familiar with the brand, and those people type it directly into the url.