domain name and search engines

[ericd]

Having the keywords in the domain, is a big advantage for high search engine rankings,

but does it matter how those keywords are writen? for example

http://www.keyword1keyword2.com

or would i be better off with

http://www.keyword1-keyword2.com

and does it matter if its a dot com,,

could it be

http://www.keyword1-keyword2.tv??

Thanks.

[jaiem]

Can't hurt but I don't think it's as helpful as you may think. I know a guy who registered http://www.keyword-keyword-keyword-k...rd-keyword.com hoping for better positioning. As far as I can tell it didn't work.

[King-abc]

In some search engines http://www.keyword1-keyword2.com can help you increase your ranking relevancy by 1-2%. It's helpful especially if your keywords are competitive. I haven't seriously verified that but I observed that altavista, google, directhit, zeal take it as a factor.

Also, filename also helps. e.g. keyword.html can be a help.

Of course, it is only 1 of factors search engines considered. To rank high, other factors should be considered. Thus, someone may use keyword1-keyword2.com but still cannot get a high ranking

[Addto]

Yes, domain name packed with keywords help. But never think that it will get top 10 positions just for having keywords in domain name. Actually other factors like

1/ link popularity and the link quality
2/ Site title
3/ description
4/ filename
5/ whether the url is homepage or sub-page
6/ keyword competitiveness
7/ meta tags
8/ content packed with no. of keywords (different requirements for different search engines)
9/ Did u spam before?
10/ keyword relevancy in title, description
11/ Did u use <alt> tag packed with keywords?

counts.
So, you need to focus all factors if your keyword is highly competitive. If you are not very familar with it or you don't have time, you can pay for search engine positioning consultant.

[scslawin]

Link popularity has grown to be the most important factor. You've got to get your site linked if you want to rank high in the search engines.

[JK_Bowman]

As more and more search engine are moving to theme based technology, they are incorporating reading domain names as a way to catagorize web sites.

In the past, the domain name was almost ignored. But that has now changed.

The most important factor seems to rely on the hyphen - .

For example, web-design.com will rank higher than webdesign.com on a search for the term 'web design'. But again, this is just a small part of what goes in to ranking a web site.

Hope that helps.

[scslawin]

Very true. An SE needs a way to distinguish one word from another and the hyphen does that.