ARTICLES FOR WEBMASTERS 
 Why Choose A Keyword-Based Domain
by Aaron Turpen
There is a debate over which is better: brandable versus keyworded
domains. The debate seems kind of moot, given that the two are
diametrically opposed (in most respects) and that, given their
differences, they require very different marketing strategies to
utilize. Whether one is better than the other is not the focus of
this article, however. This article's focus is on how best to
utilize keyworded (or keyword-based) domains.
First, a definition of what a keyworded domain is. Keyworded
domains, which are also called keyword-based domains, are domains that
incorporate keywords into the domain name itself, as implied by their
name. If a website sells socks and has a keyworded domain, it
would have a domain name with words such as "socks" or "knit" or even
"tube" in it. A blog focusing on movie reviews would likely have
a keyword-based domain such as "moviereviewblog" or "movieblog".
Keyworded domains have two major advantages in online marketing: they
communicate to the visitor right away what the site is about and they
are a huge boon to SEO marketing. A visitor going to
"tubesocks.com" will definitely understand that this site sells tube
socks. A search engine, when indexing a site, will likely see the
words "tube" and "socks" in the domain, marking them as keywords.
Every search engine marketer knows that search engines love
keywords. They literally eat them up. Having keywords in a
domain name makes it a bigger meal to the search engine, pumping up the
site's potential search engine optimization (SEO) marketing
potential. Provided the site has content to match the domain
name, of course.
One of the big disadvantages for keyworded domains is in their
relatively narrow focus. This can shut them off from being
utilized for other searches. For instance, if a business is
affiliate-based and it's focus is on book and software sales, having a
keyword-based domain such as "software4u.com" will more or less
eliminate the use of book sales keywords for SEO. An attempt to
combine two keywords or phrases into a domain name like
"booksandsoftware4u.com" is definitely too long to be utilized for
radio, print, or other advertising and is going to be hard for
potential customers to remember, failing to capture those all-important
return sales. A balance would have to be struck, with either two
different domains registered and the products separated on two separate
sites, which doubles the marketing, or having one domain forward to
another, which will knock SEO potential.
There is one more reason why keyworded domains are so useful in online
marketing that has not yet been mentioned. That is
backlinking. When one site links to another (through a "buddy"
page, article posts, as reference, etc.) that is called
"backlinking." This is very important to search engines and
backlinks with keywords in them (i.e. a keyword-based domain) is a
double-whammy in this regard.
Keyworded domains have some great advantages and many marketers are
utilizing them as part of their overall marketing strategy.
Keyword-based domains can provide better SEO, better customer
retention, and higher overall search result potential.
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