Internet Marketing gurus such as Dan Brock and others have been teaching for sometime that there are two wys to go about choosing a domain name when you have chosen a particlular niche that you want to go into for SEO. You can either choose a domain that has no keywords in it, but is more brandable, such as Groupon, or you can choose a domin name that has keywords in it, such as “BuyViagraOnline.net. ”

The focus in the past few years has been on choosing keywords that go into the domain name, a common “trick” if you like. A few years ago I used to do just that, by choosing a maximum of three keywords for each domain as 3 seemed to be the sweet spot for SEO and excellent rankings

Matt Cutts Keywords in a Domain NameChoosing low competition keywords was taught in almost every Affiliate Marketing course as a way to get on the front page of Google, the ultimate goal of all SEO.

However, times have changed and according to Google Software Engineer Matt Cutts from the Google Webmasters Central Forum it is definitely possible to succeed in SEO without having keywords in the domain name. In fact the focus now with Google is less to do with any “tricks” or “techniques.” Rather the focus is on the Users Experience when they visit your site.

Factors that are taken into account include the unique content on the site, and how much there is as well as how long the user stays and the relevance of the information on the website to the user.  Look at all the big name brand sites and their domain names such as “Facebook” “Twitter” “Yahoo”, and even “Zinger” which has no indication in the domain name that it has anything to do with social networking!

IF your goals are to have a brandable name, such as your business, your might want to have that in the domain name and then you can link to it. Matt says that he is more inclined to go with domain names that are more brandable, because if there are 20 different sites on “Android”, and all of the sites have Android in their domain name it is going to be a bit hard to remember.

For more comprehensive explanation and more details, please take a few moments to watch the following video.

What are your thought on the importance of keywords in a domain name? I’m interested to know what you’re up to, so please post your comments below.

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