SEO question about domains

[alternadiv]

Say you want to make a forum about bananas, but bananaforum.com is taken. You know someone looking for a banana forum would Google “banana forum” before anything else. BananaX.com is not taken, so you use that and put the forum in the subdirectory /forum.

My question is, would that alternative help Google find your site because it sees BananaX.com/forum in the URL? Or does this have no benefit over just going with something like bananalovers.com which Google could still find when someone searches for banana forum?

Thanks!



...banana

 

[Mr Lucky]

I don't think the domain name really helps Google find the site, but it's useful to have search words in the URL because it will show them in the search results and so may bring it more to peoples' attention.. So you might find bananadiscussion.com, bananatalk.com, banananews.com, everythingbanana.com all as good.

You don't really need the /forum/ directory IMO. If you really want the word forum in the URL I'd go for something like bigbananaforum.com or thebananaforum.com

(In fact with xenforo it is a negative because you then get the double /forum/forums in the forum list and thread list)

 

[djbaxter]

Keywords in domains have been progressively devalued in Google's algorithms for some time now, despite remaining in the mythology of people selling SEO services. You are far better off getting a unique domain name that is less likely to be confused with other sites and is helpful in branding the site, rather than hoping for a ranking boost.

See Google Says Exact Match Domains Don't Get Magic Ranking Bonus for a recent discussion.

 

[alternadiv]

Thanks guys. That clears that up.