Today's question comes from MCDOT in Berlin.
Mcdot asks, how would you explain the power of keyword domains to someone looking to take a decision what kind of domain to go for?
So what what McDonald is referring to is that if you're registering a new domain name so you want to try to compete in some particular niche within SEO, you can take a couple of different strategies.
You can go for something really brandable like Twitter that people will remember, but isn't necessarily keywords in the domain name.
Or you can go for strictly the keywords in the domain name.
People do it with all kinds of different areas.
So buy viagraonline.
Org or buy viagraonline.
Net.
And so different people have reasonable disagreements about whether it's better to shoot for a keyword laden domain or a domain that doesn't necessarily have the keywords in it, but it's a little more brandable.
So some things to think about.
It's definitely possible to succeed without having keywords in your domain.
Think about some of the big successes.
There are Zynga, nothing in that domain name says social or gaming or anything like that.
Twitter, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, the names that are brandable, the names that you instantly can recall when you think about tend not to be those keyword laden domains.
Now on the keyword side, one advantage that they might have is that if you're referring to the name of the business, you might link to it and then you might link to it with the
So it's a little bit of a toss up.
It depends on what your goals are, what things you're interested in.
For me, I tend to lean a little more towards things that are brandable because, for example, if you have 15 sitesabout Android and they all have Android, Android, Android,
Android, it's going to be a little hard to remember to rise above the noise, to rise above the den.
Whereas if you have something that's a little more brandable, then people are going to remember that they're going to be able to come back to it.
Even sites like TechCrunch.
Nothing in there says tech news.
Even weird.
Urls Hacker News has news.
Y Combinator.
Com Reddit has nothing about this is really interesting.
Social news dig.
Very random.
Url.
So if you think about you're trying to shoot for a big success, sometimes going for something a little more brandable can be good.
Now if you're still on the fence, let me just give you a little bit of color that we have looked at the rankings and the weights that we give to keyword domains.
And some people have complained that we're giving a little too much weight for keywords and domains.
And so we have been thinking about adjusting that mix a little bit and sort of turning the knob down within the algorithm, so that given two different domains, it wouldn't necessarily necessarily help you as much to have a domain with a bunch of keywords in it.
So those are some of the factors.
That's how I'd explain the trade offs.
If you're looking at starting a new domain and you're trying to figure out which way to go.