Keywords in a domain name are they that important ?

[@zrael]

Im going through a nice list of domain names that i thaught about getting and it dawned on me
is it important to have a keyword or more in the domain name ?
lets take an example

porntgp.com now thats got porn and tgp as keywords so if its optimised corectly should get some nice trafic

now in the oposit lets take another
thehun.com there are no actual keywords in the domain name but its an easy to remember and catchy name and the searches per day are outstanding


so all in all porntgp has very litle searches a day where as the hun has a whoping amount

so is it more important to bye a catchy name easy to remember and optimise your pages rather than bye a domain name with keywords ?

[sundiver]

buy a catchy name containing some relevant keyword. that would be the best choice
keyword in domain name helps you to get higher position, but it is only the one of many factors. it doesn't give you really big advantage. so I'd vote for catchy name.

[Head Boy]

I've read all sorts of mixed reports about this. The domain name doesn't seem to be counted when ranking a site, but it seems to help prove link relevance, so it could have an indirect effect. I also read that the words in the domain name are removed from the page text when Google is evaluating a page - I'm not sure of the justification for that.

I tend to ignore SEs when choosing names and go for ones that are good for direct navigation, or to pull surfers off the SERPs.

[@zrael]

Originally Posted by Head Boy

I tend to ignore SEs when choosing names and go for ones that are good for direct navigation, or to pull surfers off the SERPs.

but wouldn't those have a keyword in them in the style pornblog.com
ium not sure i understand the direct navigation bit

[Head Boy]

There's a lot of similarity between search keywords and type-in names of course. You have to watch plurals and keyword orders if you want to grab surfers through their address bars though.

[jade12]

Originally Posted by Head Boy

There's a lot of similarity between search keywords and type-in names of course. You have to watch plurals and keyword orders if you want to grab surfers through their address bars though.

Yeah b/c when you found that one domain for me there was quite a significant difference the typeins for the singular form and the plural form.

And I myself have read a lot of theories on it too, some say it does make a difference in your ranking and some say it doesn't. Personally I just pick a catchy domain that is related to the content on the site and then really how well it does in the SE's is at my own fate.