How important is the domain name for SEO

Question

Most people advice to buy a domain name that exactly matches your main business field. For example if you sell computers the best one will probably be computers.com but with millions(maybe billions) of website all over the web the chance the perfect domain for you to be free is (lets be hones) less than zero. So you have to satisfy yourself with something else like company-name-computers.com or just company-name.com.
So the question is how much does this counts when the search engines calculate your website position in SERPs cause I have always thought that having high quality and related content, pretty URLs and back-links from valuable sources is more important then the domain name itself.

Answer 1

A list in order-of-importance would be impossible to create if we were hoping for any long term credibility, but yes, SEO does factor into SERPs and no, it's not going to ruin your SEO strategy if you use a non-relevant domain name.

With social marketing, quality content, clean code, etc. it's quite possible to get ranked well if you know what you're doing. You're certainly not going to be penalized if your domain isn't keyword heavy.

It's 2010. Domains are scarce. Most new services are inventing words and mashing things together in a way that algorithms can't possibly find relevance in. Pick a domain that's marketable first, good for SEO second.

Answer 2

The domain name is important but not the end-all and be-all of SEO. If you can get a domain name with good keywords in it you will definitely have an advantage over someone with the similar content who does not. BUT you can overcome not having a good domain name with quality content, good URLs, etc. as they all are factors and can help you overcome the lack of a good domain name (especially if you have quality incoming links).

Answer 3

The domain name is very important. Here is some ideas based on my experience.

1. People love to see a good domain name that matches their search keywords. If they see it, they click it. A good domain name is a click-magnet.
2. Google search engine loves to see an exact match between the search keywords and the domain name.
3. There is a self-reinforcing loop because of 1. and 2. Since people click on it, Google rank the site higher, etc.

Keep in mind that most search queries have 1 or 2 keywords. Long tail is just what it is: it's long tail, which means it's the rest...

Estibot has a very good PDF doc for free about domain development that explains basically just that (without the self-reinforcing theory which is my TM).

Other good example: if you search "ebook", ebook.com ranks #1 although it's absolutely not a key player in that field. They are actually selling the domain name because they exit this market...

I am not saying the domain name will alone ensure a SERP 1. But it's the fundament of your SEO. Backlinks, Pagerank, etc will not replace a good domain name.

Answer 4

It's 2015.

For those who still stumble on this question, which was last answered in 2010, take a look at the biennial survey by Moz on the ranking factors in Google's algorithm (https://moz.com/search-ranking-factors). You'll notice that domain level keyword usage (exact match) is still relevant.

Some of the points mentioned above do make sense too. There are still loads of good quality domain names available within the market. Do not discount tlds such as .net and .org (and many others) that will also do well in SEO.

As an example, if you are mainly targeting people in the UK, a .uk domain would make better sense (and would rank better) as compared to a .com - this is due to the rise of localized searches.

It is also possible to rank well when your domain name does not even have a hint of the keywords you're targeting to rank well for - as others have mentioned, write for humans, have good metas, build high quality backlinks etc...

Remember, even if your root domain does not contain the keywords, you can always place a keyword within your posts/page URLs :)