Domain Name can be classifieds into two categories:

1. Keyword Specific

2. Brand Name Specific

Keyword Specific Domain Name ----------------------------

When Keywords and Keyphrases are used in a Domain name then its called Keyword specific Domain name.

Keyword in domain name to my mind has two advantages.

One It is better to have a keyword domain name for it is worth remembering that most of people link to you using your URL. If your URL has keyword or keyphrase then you are automatically using keyword in very important anchor tag.

Secondly, though marginally, in a ranking scenario with every other parameter remaining equal, Keyword Specific Domain Name will enjoy a slight edge over other web site. However remember Keyword used in Domain name should be primary and generic. Specific keywords can be used in sub domains. Read about use of subdomains.

Keywords and Keyphrases uses with hyphen/underscore in Domain name are said to preferred as they are read by search engines as separate words. So domain name can have a search phrase incorporated into it. However flip side of it is that domain names with hyphen or underscore are inconvenient to carry.

Brand Name Specific Domain Name -------------------------------

When company or organizations’ name is used in Domain Name to brand it then it’s called as Brand Name Specific Domain name.

Brand Name Specific Domain Name does not help online searches at all. However they are very powerful tools for company identification in mind of users. In anonymous online world a brand spells loyalty, trust & value. So if you choose to go for building your brand rather than deep rooted optimization, one way of incorporating keywords is through your directories & pages names.

KEYWORD DENSITY ---------------

Keyword Density is a proportion of searched term ( Keyword or Keyphrase) against whole words written on a given page. The ideal Keyword Density is 6%-8% though various search engines have various tolerance levels before their spam filters get activated. Higher Keyword Density does help to boost a pages’ ranking.

Keyword Density can be increased by using target keywords repeatedly in Title tag, Header tag, Body tag, Comment tag, Alt tag, Anchor tag, Paragraph Tag , Domain name and in diretory/page names.

However one disadvantage of trying to hike keyword density is that visible text on page starts to look spammy if it is not carefully crafted. That makes for a bad copy.

I'm an eBiz consultant and owner of Mosaic Services- an SEO Company. I regularly write and submit articles on various SE specific topics.

If one has certain set of keywords then tools like WT & Overture can also be used to arrive at other relevant seed keywords.

Typically seed keywords are single word. A good number of seed Keywords is between 10-12.

SUB theme Keywords (add Qualifiers)

Now to these seed keywords add qualifiers.

These qualifiers can be anything location/sub-product/color/part no/activity/singular etc.

By utilizing these qualifiers one can expand list of seed keywords. Say a good number would be anywhere between 20-30.

Typicaly a sub theme key phrase could be of 2-3 -4 word length.

One recent study suggests that

The typical searcher often uses longer queries. Many contain more than three words. Within three different search engines, keyword distribution data tells a compelling story: Words in Query LookSmart (%) Ask.com (%) Teoma (%) 1 27.00 12.76 38.04 2 33.00 22.46 29.59 3 23.00 19.34 18.13 4 10.00 11.89 8.00 5 7.00* 7.86 3.51 6 - 6.19 1.39 7 - 5.47 0.63

LookSmart does not report beyond 5 search terms, instead grouping five or more terms into one category.

Approximately 40 percent of queries in LookSmart have three or more words. About 32 percent in Teoma have three or more. Ask Jeeves has an even higher skew, nearly 62 percent, because of its natural language focus. Within FAST, database that powers Lycos and others, average is 2.5 terms. That suggests a similar frequency distribution to LookSmart and Teoma.

Hence we can keep average length of sub theme keywords at around 3.

I'm an eBiz consultant and owner of Mosaic Services- an SEO Company. I regularly write and submit articles on various SE specific topics.