SEO: How Important is Domain Name?

Honestly, I am no SEO expert. But certainly getting interested in the field…

So, I’ll try to find out whatever questions I face as I learn more and more about SEO while working on SEO of my real estate startup, and post them.

So, one of the first question on anyone’s mind, who is contemplating an internet venture, is the domain name. He wants it to be unique…but he would also want people to find it out easily…and if people are to find it out easily, Google needs to be able to find it easily.

Does Google give a lot of importance to Domain name having keywords? Apparently, YES!

As an example, let us search for Gurgaon Properties on Google Do you see? gurgaonproperties.net, gurgaon-properties.com, gurgaonproperties.org, hotpropertiesgurgaon.com…

Have you seen any of these sites? Do you think they contain more property listings, or more traffic, or more backlinks than say 99acres, or even Zamanzar? God damn No! …The secret must be the domain name.
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Another point…as you know backlink’s anchor text is very important for a search engine…that makes the context lot clearer for it…so obviously, having keywords in your domain name will make sure that most of your backlinks also have that keyword!

Now what is the flip side? IMHO -

1. The sites would not be ranked so high for other keywords…Let us search Real Estate in Gurgaon on Google. This search doesn’t include any of the above domains on first page. Now even a dumbo would know that these 2 terms are very similar, and someone looking for properties in Gurgaon wouldn’t really mind to look at Real Estate in Gurgaon…but sadly, search engines are not so intelligent yet…they still heavily believe in keyword matching, than overall semantics.

So the point is, domain name can win a battle…but not war !

2. It looks cheap. “MagicBricks” or “99acres” sound like a brand. The names have uniqueness. They have relevance to the vertical they operate in. For a consumer, it is a lot easier to remember these names and come back…Would you buy your laptop on dell.com or ebay.com, or from some unknown brand with a domain of cheap laptops?

Brand Matters More. Period.