SEO and Domain Name Choices

[EDS]

Hi all you SEO Guys

Just wondering do you feel that your domain name effects your page ranking and if so would a sub domain help ie. tshirts.elegantds.co.uk I haven't setup any links like this but just wondered if it would make a difference?

Thanks.

[WomenXtra]

I think it helps by 1% maybe, but not the biggest and most major factor in SEO. I would recommend though making sure your files and page names have relevant words and keywords. If you test it in Google/Yahoo, you will notice that if there is no sites matching, they go to the next best thing, which is the file name.

[Coding Monkey]

It will go to those that the search engines consider relevant, and the domain name is no longer an important factor, but it will make a contribution. However, it will not by default go to the domain name or file name unless there are no other factors involved.

[crus]

Agreed,

a good domain can help, where it really can help is with natural typeins.

However I would not start seoing unless the domain was good, why make things hard?

D

[Tin]

Also think about whether you are promoting your site in other ways.

I promote one of my personal sites via an ad on a number of cars and as the domain name is hyphenated it really helps passers by to interpret the name easily. If it were just letters then in the same few seconds would passers by remember what the name was ie;
www.theunusualgiftshop.co.uk or is www.the-unusual-gift-shop.co.uk more readable. It also helps if you buy the variants on a theme to cover all options.

I notice that after I've been driving around a large city I get a 'spike' in visitors to the site for the next few days. :-)

[crus]

As a follow up,

I have just had an offer on a domain that demonstrates the power of a good domain.

cdj.co.uk (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=cdj&btnG=Search&meta=cr%3DcountryUK%7CcountryGB)

food for thought as although the parking page is good and (UP) is a well networked site, but with a 0 PR, cdj.co.uk has a PR of 5 and I belive the domain is the key driver in this case.

D

[lyndonw]

Having the keywords in the domain can help catch type-ins but several SEO competitions at the moment are being led/hotly contested by sites with no keywords in the domain.