How Important is it to have Exact Keyword Match Domain Name

Just a few days, I was talking with a few people in a well known online forum. There was this guy who was quite prepared to throw in his towel in internet marketing. Basically, Bob has invested more than $60,000 and two years of his time learning, developing and driving traffic to his website. However, he has not monetized the way he saw his compatriots did. Bob’s online income was pathetically little. In his own words, “quite insufficient to pay for website hosting even”.

Bob was extremely puzzled because he believes that he has done what every internet guru did. First and foremost, he said his domain name was keyword rich. His site offers wedding management and tips, and he therefore used a long tail key word which include “weddingtips” in his URL. He said there must be millions of people looking for wedding tips and he could not fathom where those targeted audience wander to. Alas, Bob only got the computation partially correct. While it is true that “wedding tips” are words used by to-be-bride and bridegrooms, it also meant that these 2 key words are highly competitive. The last I checked with Google, there was 108,000,000 search results on “wedding tips” alone. Our frustrated friend’s URL has an adjective and a number before “weddingtips”.  What this means is Bob’s website is no where near #1 spot on Google Page 1. In fact, his website is not listed in the first ten pages of Google’s search results.

Some online marketing experts would suggest that it is a much better route to attract “Type-In Traffic” than spend exorbitant amount to draw in traffic. Type-In traffic is when a person navigates directly to a website by simply typing in what they are looking for and then “.com” at the end into their URL bar in their browser. It is not easy to know what your end users are thinking. If you have done enough homework and manage to find an exact match keyword only domain name, you will have a higher opportunity of attracting type-in-traffic to the your domain. Naturally, you will also receive some Search Engine Optimization (SEO) benefit to using the same domain name as well.

While it is reasonably okay to include number in your website, online marketing experts frown on using numeral substitutions. In another word, avoid replacing “for” with the numeral “4″ or substituting “to” for “2″. Simply because the average Joes and Janes do not type words like “vitamin 4 flu” in the search field. Using the same logic, it is best to stay away from “u” when you actually mean “you”.

Choosing a domain name is basic, however, far from easy if your goal is to monetize your website. Beside reading all you can from online marketing gurus, it is worthwhile to invest time and effort to talk to people who have useful experience to share. Learning from a mentor will short cut your way to online success.