Domain Names - How Important Are They Today

There are a number of false ideas about Domain Names and the importance for SEO.

Wrong Idea # 1 is that the Domain Name is insignificant, and has no bearing upon your rankings. This is patiently false.

Wrong Idea #2 is that Search Engines can't make out words that have no dash between them, so having one or two dashes is a beneficial matter.

Absolutely and utterly fictitious. We have purchased a smattering of domains on a particular subject, all with varying numbers of characters. All were 2 word domains. Some have dashes and some had no dashes.

One of the domains ranked first page on Google with 10 million results for the two word phrase. The phrase was the only one of the two word domains I chose that would likely get search traffic. This domain had no inbound links, and no significant content.

In other words, this domain skyrocketed to the top of search engine rankings for the two word phrase based solely on the fact that the domain name was those two words. Since the domain name had no dashes, Google had to have been able to distinguish them to know to rank it for this phrase. We've put keywords in place of the actual market because this is a topic we build many sites on.

So, anytime someone tells you differently, just know that a good domain name can be an easy way to make a important difference in rankings. And yes, the domain name can be something totally unrelated to your site but it means you have to do other things to make up for it. For example in lesser competitive keyword arenas, minor changes like the addition of a few links could easily change the ranking order of the top sites.

There's also major changes that occur across the index when Google performs an algorithm update. This differs from the continuous updating that takes place daily by the fact that Google overhauls some part of the way they rank pages system-wide snf the purpose is simply to improve their overall search results.