Keywords in website name !!!

[shaun adams]

How much does it help to have a keyword in your username for example

I sell (Banners, posters and labels) do I need banners, signs, posters or labels key word or could I just call myself (fictional name)

Shaun design printing

This is the problem I see, people will type banner printing - sign printing but not just printing.

[shaun adams]

sorry I mean like www.shaundesignprinting.co.uk (http://www.shaundesignprinting.co.uk)

[fisicx]

How is the SE going to work out what your keywords are from your domain name? shaunde-sign-printing perhaps?

If you want keywords in your domain name then you need to use hyphens but that just makes you look-like-a-spammy-website.

[crossdaz]

sorry I mean like www.shaundesignprinting.co.uk (http://www.shaundesignprinting.co.uk)


this is how - a page for each service, thus:

shaunsdesignprinting.co.uk/signs.htm

page title: Printed Signs | Shaun's Design & Printing

shaunsdesignprinting.co.uk/posters.htm

page title: Printed Posters | Shaun's Design & Printing

shaunsdesignprinting.co.uk/labels.htm

page title: Printed Labels | Shaun's Design & Printing

[Astaroth]

Thankfully you dont need to have hyphens in the domain name to benefit from keywords in it. Dont think they look particularly spammy but possibly a little second class but more importantly a mouthful to say.

There is certainly plenty of evidence to show there is benefit however the exact formulas are not in the public domain and by all accounts change fairly frequently. Certainly more learned people than me have recently been claiming that having generics (eg carinsurance.co.uk) is now receiving less weight than it used to on the basis it is simply a question of wallet size over who owns than rather than true relevance, authority or originality etc

[fisicx]

Thankfully you dont need to have hyphens in the domain name to benefit from keywords in it.
Explain please? Just because the SE highlights the keywords within a string doesn means to say it is able to identify the keyword as seprate entity.

For example: blindshop, is that blind shop or blinds hop?

I do agree that the ranking benefit of a keyword rich domain is now very low when compared to the strength of other ranking signals.

[shaun adams]

This is really confusing me as when I type banner printing up it comes up with names like

digitalprintexpress

discountdisplays

1clickprint

On the first page, does keywords in the name really help ???

[NextPoint]

Yes, keywords in a domain name will help - they probably get you a lot of points providing that your website isn't blacklisted or associated with spam websites. Think of it logically, if I'm looking for a website about Amiga - the website called Amiga.com or Amiga.org is likely to be directly relevant to what I'm looking for - then extra points can be taken into account by looking at page URLs, page titles, page descriptions, content and incoming links.

[fisicx]

All google is doing is highlighting where there is a match. It does the same in the meta description as well. Doesn't mean that the word is being used in the ranking calculation though.

[shaun adams]

Is there a big plus for having a keyword in the name, having a name not tied down to 1 keyword like banner could be better as we sell a few different products.

If this is going to bring in a lot more customers then this is something that we would have to do, I will still have page titles like ....

www.shaundesignprinting.co.uk (http://www.shaundesignprinting.co.uk/)/html/pvc_banners.htm (http://www.discountdisplays.co.uk/html/pvc_banners.htm)

[Astaroth]

Explain please? Just because the SE highlights the keywords within a string doesn means to say it is able to identify the keyword as seprate entity.

For example: blindshop, is that blind shop or blinds hop?
The problem with all SEO arguments is that 1) no one outside the search engines truly knows 2) it is very hard if not impossibly to truly test theories of the ranking system because you cannot make every other variable equal.

I have worked with a lot of top people, companies and agencies including some ex employee's of search engines and all claim that their evidence is that keywords rich domains (without hyphens) are of a benefit. Certainly they have much more experience than me in the field and are predominately people I would trust.

The how to split a domain name into separate words is a problem for humans as much as it is for bots - the one and only time I made money from buying and selling domains was exactly because of this, the company thought it was their name with "WAP" at the end where as it was bought to be another companies name with "Swap" at the end. I had permission from one company to use their trademark with swap at the end and the two companies were in a long running trademark dispute and so got into a bidding war to buy the domain off me.

I am certainly on extremes of my knowledge but my understand would be that the example would effectively get a ranking bonus for Blind (plurals are generally ignored) and both Hop and Shop. Add in the rest of the content of the site, inbound links, meta data etc and one will rank better than the other. A very old site I used to own spuriously would come up on search engines because of an unintentional word that could be gotten from the domain name. Of cause as it was the site name the same word was also in the copy as well as the domain so could argue that and not the domain name was causing it

[shaun adams]

Also to get to the first page of (banner printing or banner) does the site need constant SEO and how much do these guys spend to get there.

Is there anyway for a website to get to the first page with out spending a constant fortune on SEO.

some of the sites on the first page look like self made websites.

[NextPoint]

From my experience, having descriptive page titles, meta descriptions and URLS (including the domain name if possible) has always lead to success in keyword searches on the search engines. If you reinforce the keywords you place in your meta descriptions, page titles and URL by having your main page content to match it, then the search engines will take your website seriously. At the end of the day, content is king - if you have good quality content on your website and add to it regularly, you will get better search engine results.

[shaun adams]

So why do SEO companies charge £100 + a week for SEO when no one has a clue what helps rankings and nothing more can be done than a few links and optimizing the website at the start.

I have not idea I am just guessing, can someone set me straight.

[Astaroth]

Because whilst no one KNOWS there is a hell of a lot of very strong evidence to say what is successful and what is unsuccessful. As it is an art and not a science then a lot of their time has to be spent on testing and seeing how trends are changing etc.

Looking at the insurance industry a number of the biggest SEO agencies specialising in this field actually run a vast number of very large and highly ranked information/ news sites for the industry and therefore whilst you are buying their expertise you are also almost buying links from their site to yours (though not officially to be penalised)

[sirearl]

Because whilst no one KNOWS there is a hell of a lot of very strong evidence to say what is successful and what is unsuccessful. As it is an art and not a science then a lot of their time has to be spent on testing and seeing how trends are changing etc.



The day SEO is an art I will put me paint brushes away.:)

And I would say that after many years of testing and research most pro SEO's have got a pretty good idea of what works.;)

To answer the OP .keyword rich domains are a big plus on google at this moment in time.

Earl