Hi - interesting.

That goes against what I have always understood.

Google’s algorithms don’t really consider the keywords in domain names.

Are you sure you don't mean URLs for posts, which should have hyphens so that Google understands what they're about?

According to what I understood about 15 years ago, a domain name should contain your website/ business name, which should be a keyword or main keyword on your homepage if you would like your homepage to rank on SERPS. However, that is usually not needed as you would rather want to rank your blog articles, specific services pages, product pages, and landing pages. I am not sure if the domain name structure's importance has changed over the years, but it used to be a big SEO factor. If you want your business and website name to rank in general, I would assume that could potentially be important.

You are right about the fact that the actual page/ blog article slug is of vital importance to contain the seed keyword, as it should also be in the title and several times throughout the article's text. I suppose this may have changed in the last few years for domains.

Hey Hein,

John Mueller back in September 2020:

“Just because a website has a keyword in its domain name doesn’t mean that it’s more relevant than others for that keyword.

In short, you don’t need to put keywords in the domain name.”

Tbh, keywords in your domain name was a practice from the 2000s.

Basically, Google was in its infancy, still learning, so could be easily manipulated.

So, we all put keywords in everything, Hahahaha!! (This actually included an old blackhat practice of inserting your keyword into a blog post multiple times with WHITE TEXT in the spaces between your paragraphs. The text would not be visible to the naked eye, but Google Bots would pick up the use of the keyword, and then potentially rank you well due to "keyword density" <---Something else which is no longer thing).

As for hyphens in the domain name, as Diane has mentioned, the thinking used to be to DO THE OPPOSITE.

The reason for this is that if someone wished to search for your website it's likely they wouldn't remember the hyphens.

Therefore, if they simply type out your domain name WITHOUT the hyphens, added .com to the end, they would have probably ended up on a competitors website.

This is why (again in the 2000s and 2010s) you were told NOT to place hyphens iin a domain name.

If the domain name that you wanted wasn't available, then find a domain name that is available, as you don't want potential visitors visiting a competitor website because the can't remember your domain name.

However, in recent years we now have "Autofill" and "Autosuggest" and "Autocomplete".

If you've visited a website a few times, as soon as you place a letter in the Google search bar, Google would initially "suggest" all recent searches you've made that include that letter.

Think about how you enter Wealthy Affiliate on a daily basis.

I simply type the letter M into my browser, and the first result is always my.wealthyaffiliate .com

In other words my browser has remembered that I visit this website regularly and so whenever I type the letter "m" into my browser, Google "suggests" the Wealthy Affiliate platform.

Domain names in the 2020s are nothing more than the BRANDING of your website.

Think about some of the most popular websites in the world

Amazon
Apple
Facebook
Twitter
Wikipedia
Instagram

There is NOT a lot of use of keywords in these domain names, but rather something "catchy" that has been turned into a brand.

In other words, your domain name has very little (if any) relationship to the ranking of your homepage, or indeed the ranking of your blog posts.

If you have a static homepage, the potential ranking of that homepage will come down to the keywords used on that page.

If you have a blog roll, the potential ranking of that homepage will come down to LINKS, the internal articles, categories, and tags, that are linking to the homepage, and also any backlinks pointing to the homepage.

But, keywords and hyphens in the domain name mean absolutely nothing nowadays.

Partha

Hey Partha. That makes sense. Thanks a lot for your valuable input here, as always. So, do you think ProVirBuServ (an acronym for Professional Virtual Business Services) is a good domain name for my DM website? I have wanted to change it because it just does not sound very understandable, but at the time it was very relevant for me, at least.

Funnily enough, I just followed Diane's instructions.

Screenshots below of domain names.

I will say I'm not a fan of the word BIZ in domain names, BUT this is completely a matter of personal preference.

I'm not sure why, but "biz" always conjures up something spammy/scammy to me.

But that's just me (unless anyone else agrees).

That being said, I do actually quite like the first domain name produced below (Hahahaha!! I know, I need to make up my mind) - virtualbizhq .com

But again, I'll repeat, the domain name doesn't make a huge difference nowadays.

Don't forget that if your homepage does rank in the SERPs then it will also display a meta description just below.

So, even if you have a domain name as your name .com (which of course many people do), if the homepage is displayed then there will be a "brief explanation" (meta description) just below the domain name/url.

I'll be honest Hein, I don't think I've ever really put any thought into a domain name, for me, it's always been about the content that you add to your site... this is what will make or break you.

Partha