How Important Are Keywords In The Domain URL For SEO?

This is one of the greatest myths and misconceptions that floats around the web and SEO world, the vast majority of my SEO tuition clients and some SEO clients also make this assumption.

Travel bag London -  Google search screenshot

Apologies for the terrible screenshot quality – crunched by Google+ and lost the original.

So How Important Are Keywords In The URL?

They are NOT! Well they may be a little bit, that is if you can manage the keyword(s) in the URL without scaring your visitors or damaging your branding, or trying so hard that you end up with a long URL that flags out the Web-SPAM portion of Google’s algorithms.

They are if you find a time machine to 2009 – Here’s Matt on the subject

The inspiration to write this post came from a card I’ve seen left out at one of the countless Pret a Manger’s in central London, a mere glance shown me that this was someone trying tooo hard… so I went on and Googled the guy.

And again didn’t fail to disappoint, the poor URL choice also matched the business model (or more the lack of it).

I’m going to change the actual order of the words in the URL.

yourlifecoachinlondon.com (that’s not a real url)

There’s a page called – Fees and contact

Free initial 90 minute session where we can grab a tea or a coffee and have a sit down in central London do discuss ambitions.

There’s extremely kind of him, but that’s not a business! I wouldn’t want life coaching advice from this guy if he paid me to get it 😀

When Is It Acceptable To Have The keywords On The URL

The short answer to that is, as mentioned above when you can use the keywords in the URL and still maintain a name you can read in a mouth full, but that’s just the beginning, you also need to have a site that makes justice to whatever the site is about, and not just a collection of pages with lots of keywords in the hope that will rank and somehow become a viable business.

What Is The EMD (Exact Match Domain) Algorithm Update?

Is a small algorithm update that addresses the problem caused by the ill informed or manipulative use of keywords in the URL. To learn more go here: The EMD Update: Google Issues “Weather Report” Of Crack Down On Low Quality Exact Match Domains

Last month there was a nice (cough – I started myself) discussion on Google+ post I made on one of the SEO communities with the image above.

I simply asked the question: Is this good or bad SEO?

Soon became clear that, at first sight it may seem good, but as a long term strategy probably not.

In this case it jut so happened that they had a good site (not just a spam job), but alongside the poor choice of domain URL, there may also have been (everything seems to indicate) a equally poor and ill informed choice of link building, that’s the only way you can plaster your way on the SERPs (search engine results page) like that, that used to be called SEO a few years ago, no is just called SPAM.

I end with one of my G+ comments on that discussion.

+Joe Bergess and +Iblis Bane I’ve seen examples where the exact domain just happens to be quality(ish) site, so in that case they don’t get a penalty.

On the other hand I have seen less of pure spam EMD where there’s little more than spam tactics and keyword stuffing.

I am also seeing more and more examples of pages ranking for keywords that appear nowhere on the title, url or description.

Actually, I End With This

Use a short memorable name for your business or even your own name if you flying solo like myself, will be far more important for your business, branding and marketing than any SEO benefit from a keyword stuffed business name.

You can see where SEO comes down the list of priorities:
Business, branding, marketing, SEO.

Worst still a badly chosen domain/URL in your list of priorities will not look like this:
SEO, business, branding, marketing.

It will look like this:
Web-SPAM, business, branding, marketing.

While we’re on the subject of TLDs, think about your domain extension, as is likely to be important too, go here for my views: Is .co.uk Better For SEO? Local SEO And TLDs

Actually, I End With This (Take Two)

If you follow the link below and compare it with the screenshot above, you can see that their great keyword stuffed domain choice and likely other ill-informed, short sighted, short term view of SEO and link building got them virtually out of page one. Ha there’s a solitary Google+ page, is like G is having a laugh at their SPAM.

And a new comment on that discussion, with a link to the search in question.

Heads up for anyone in doubt if that was good or bad SEO.

40 Days later go here

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=tarvel+bag+london&qscrl=1#q=travel+bag+london

Happy URL and domain hunting always a fun process!

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