Importance Of A Good Domain

[incka]

Yes, we all talk about mikes-good-discount-autos.com being better than MrMAutos.com for the keyword 'discount autos' but I feel word of mouth is very important and domains are becoming less important in google rankings.

Saying this I bought world-war-2.net instead of a domain like ww2info.com.

Your opinions?

[Chris]

Domains haven't become more or less important. They were never that important, but they can add a edge in a highly competitive field. It mostly comes down to if you have control over your incoming links or not.

If you do have control then domain doesn't matter as much, if you don't then having a keyword rich domain and a site name that matches it will help a great deal.

[incka]

OK, Let me make a comparison.

Your literature site is www.online-literature.com which is quite a good name, but not the best. It is far better than Literature.org but is only PR6. It has been going about the same time at Literature.org. Literature.org is PR8.

I think that has got something to do with domains.

[Chris]

My site has not been around nearly as long as literature.org

and PR and domains are completely unrelated.

[Chris]

also if I didn't siphon pr off my site it'd be atleast a 7. Most of my book/author subpages are 6's.

[MarkB]

I've been wondering about this recently - thanks for clearing it up, Chris.

I've had ideas for sites, but am tired of thinking up keyword-rich domains when I really just want a funky domain that people will remember.

[pulsetoday]

i think we are forgetting one word here - branding. I will not matter much if you are going in for a geeky kind of target market or do not want to brand it offline for some high profile image or campaign.

[Kyle]

I believe it is unfair to generalize about what type of domain is better than the next. It depends completely on a persons budget, the overall goal of the site (long term or short term), and what the availability is.

I am not a fan of dashes in domains, and would rather spend the extra money to get a more premier .com or .net. My site surviveoutdoors.com has barely any incoming links where the webmaster did not seperate the keywords 'survive' and 'outdoors'. If Chris used onlineliterature.com instead, Im sure he would be in fine shape also.

It really is all up to the publisher, there is no right or wrong. If your site is of the highest quality, it really doesn't matter what the domain is.

However!!! Never have 2 dashes or more! That sucks! hehe :)

[chromate]

Icebane, as usual, has hit the nail right on the head! :) Like so many things, it depends on the individual project and it's not right to generalise.

If you want type in traffic, go for a domain without a hyphen. If that's not important to you, then don't worry about that hyphen. It just depends on how you plan to make a project work. There is no definitive right or wrong for every single case.

[Kyle]

chromate - Dude, nice ranking on southbeach diet....

[chromate]

Thanks. Even managed to knock the official site off the #1 spot which I thought would never happen :) Though occasionally my site does drop below the official site, at which point my earnings also drop by about 80% :) So that's not so good. But it's nice whilst it's at #1 at least.

[Best.Flash]

However!!! Never have 2 dashes or more! That sucks! hehe :)

Lol :)

What was it you where saying about generalising...