Domain name questions. To buy or not to buy.

[bradmleeb]

I spent some money to buy my main domain name. I then went to godaddy and bought 'supporting' domain names with certain key words. I own a few good domains that I will keep for a long time, and I have them all redirecting to my main website.

My questions are......

- Do domain names with key words make a difference, traffic wise?
- Does the oder of words make a difference for domain name traffic? (ex: freebet.com vs betfree.com)
- Is it wise or not wise (rude) to buy domains that play off other names? (ex: 888sport.com and you buy bet888sport.com)

Any info is appreciated.

[davemerry]

Hi Brad! Of course stuff like this is subject to opinion, however I have given some feedback to your questions below...

- Do domain names with key words make a difference, traffic wise?

Yes, domains which have high volume keywords mentioned are more likely to rank in search engines for the given keyword due to the way search engines treat them. Although you are probably aware of this you can check out the search volume for any keyword here https://adwords.google.com/select/Ke...rceLegacy=true

A LOT of traffic can be accrued through this channel with keyword domains for this reason alone. You may also get a few type in's from old school web users if you are lucky!

- Does the oder of words make a difference for domain name traffic? (ex: freebet.com vs betfree.com)

Yes I would say it does, although having the keywords in reverse order would certainly be preferable to not having them at all when it comes to affiliate sites IMO.

- Is it wise or not wise (rude) to buy domains that play off other names? (ex: 888sport.com and you buy bet888sport.com)

Certainly would stay away from this. They will either let it slip through the net then one day realise you are infringing their trademark and ban your affiliate account and all earnings. Or they will just take the domain straight away

[bradmleeb]

Thanks DaveMerry.

Good info. Common sense stuff too, but I like to get the feedback.

I am going to do some more research on other keywords....

Cheers.

[webber286]

1) Keyword rich domains are easier to rank for their keywords then general domain names
2) The order of the keywords doesn't appear to make much difference when looking over the SERPs, but this is opinion more than tested fact
3) I too would avoid using other brand names in your domain as you are likely to upset the brand owner and wouldn't the purpose of using 888 in a domain name to be to direct traffic to them?

[bradmleeb]

Thanks Weber286.

Good info.

[graham]

2nd davemerry's posts. Exact match keyword domains will make it much easier to rank for the exact match keyword in them. And I would definitely check with a company first before using their trademark in a domain name or you might do a lot of work for nothing when they take it back from you later.

[davenewgates]

Of course keywords rich domain will have higher chance of ranking in Google compare to other domains plus those with high volume keywords are memorable domains. I don't think the order of keywords will have an effect to google's ranking. And I will not resort to playing up with the brand names of popular domain, to avoid copyright infringement.

[JoeAdams]

<meta http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><title></title><meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 3.2 (Win32)"><style type="text/css"> <!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } --> </style> You've said it all guys, what more can I say.. well, ordering of keywords doesn't make sense for search engines.. for example, if your keyword is online casino and you type in casino online, it can still be crawled by the search engines.. And as the others suggest, avoid using others brand name in your domain. Take it from the experts.

[les]

From personal experience, the more of your main keywords are part of the domain the easier is the SEO job becomes.
And if there is a fierce competition freebet.com vs betfree.com will make a huge difference in ranking.

[bonusbetting]

Hello.

I've seen a competitor has registered a domain with a keyword phrase and pointed it at a section of their main site. I noticed that the keyword domain did not rank at all, but that section of their site now ranks very well for the keyword phrase.

It's not something I've done before, so I wanted to ask what sort of redirect is used? DNS? 301?

[davemerry]

Hi John,

That would be a 301 redirect and a common (although slightly greyhat) SEO tactic used by some people.

You can check out any exact header response shown using a number of tools, my favourite is http://web-sniffer.net/. Type the URL into there and it will give you the answer, although I am 99% sure that the tactic only involves 301's.

Let me know if you need anything else.

Cheers,
Dave

[bonusbetting]

That's useful advice. I'm going to stick with whiter than white-hat.