YOUR opinion on keywords in domains

[zerk]

It's been argued, by both sides, that keywords in domains do serve a large purpose and others simply state the title is currently one of the most important factors in a pages rank in the SERPS.

here's my thought on this. Do a search for almost any keyword you can think of. Wow, most of the results have the keyword in the domain right. So the keywords MUST have a major effect in the domain. Now again, continue looking, look closely at the TITLES of the pages being displayed. Most often, they are most relevent to your site.

My gaming site is another example. It is called Florina Beach. Florina Beach is a PLACE to go to in the popular MMORPG Games MapleStory. This name was good for two reasons. One it is somewhat interested, peope want to see what is inside of it. Secondly, when people search for any words containing "guide to florinabeach" or "how to get to florinabeacH", simply because that name was in my site title, it was beneficial.

We've expanded our theme to include MMORPG games. Our title now states "MMORPG Online Games". In a matter of about 5 days we are on page 3 for "MMORPG Online Games" and getting up there for "MMORPG Games" simply by editing the title and some of the pages link and content, WITHOUT editing our domain to include "MMORPG".

With so many domain registrations and .info's that "use-hyphens-every-other.word", the effect is key wording a domain is somewhat... inadequate. My original plan was to get a new domain for our expansion, however we would then be loosing those 60% of our visitors that have my website bookmarked.

So instead, I have decided to stick with branding and make FlorinaBeach and oasis for online gamers! Seems to be working, hits are up, registrations are up, and our search results are rising.

What is your experience on this issue?

[titaniumhijau]

Not really have bad situation to me. BUt i'm fine my own way to find good keyword for my domain..

[smithkarl]

Remember that your goal is not just to get traffic from search engines, but to turn traffic into customers.

Domain name may not appear very welcoming if you exaggerate but it helps to have a keyword. On my new site, I did not bother using though.

Karl

[goodboys]

Keywords really play a great role in driving the traffic to your website. The better the keywords, the more likely people are to visit your website.

[templatelite]

I agree with zerk. Keywords in domain play an important role in search ranking. But for tough keywords, link popularity plays a bigger role.

[roogy30]

it's arguable both the ways. sometimes even if the domain is a meaningless junk of characters, it definitely works out if it is easy to pronounce.