How important are domain names?

[wazza1985]

Hi All,

Question: How important are domain names when trying to rank for a competitive keyword?

Thanks

[SeattleOrganicSEO]

One of the reasons why keywords in a domain name work so well are because when links and references are made to the website, the keywords are typically the anchor text that are in the links.  So, you get an extra advantage beyond even the semantic benefit of having the keywords in the domain name.  You'll have less worries in the anchor text link building violations because you can build more links similar to the keywords in your domain.

However, it appears in certain verticals, there are more benefits for the exact keywords in a domain.  Check out attorney phrases for example.  Do some research by checking out specific verticals and you might get your answer in terms of how important or how valuable they can be.

[CPU]

As to when this happens - who knows could be a month, 6 months, a year but for one of my clients whose company name is the same as the domain which is the same as the primary keyphrase I am working on improving the link profile so that if any hit somes along it is minimised as the site ranks top on all metrics.

[E-dreamz]

From my perspective Google put heavy weight on direct match domains to ensure brands ranked correctly on their exact search. Overtime people realized this and of course abused it.

Right now you have a VERY good chance of ranking on page 1 if you have the exact match .com, .net, .org, or whatever country code you want to rank for.

Obviously removing the weight could potentially hurt Google and the rankings. Imagine all those small local businesses(with no SEO) that people search for everyday that could potentially de-rank. That would not help the user experiance what so ever.

I am very interested to see how they handle any update on this subject.

[wazza1985]

Thanks Lewis,

Any idea when this change is going to be made to the algorithm?

Also, does this mean when the change is made there will be a big reshuffle of websites ranking positions?

[CPU]

Currently they are well correlated however following recent comments by Matt Cutts keyword matched domain names are likely to reduce in power so any strategy shouldn't just be based on the domain name.