: The question is slightly ambiguous because of the term 'URL' as opposed to being specific about the domain. The URL refers to the whole web page address, including the domain name (good reference
The question is slightly ambiguous because of the term 'URL' as opposed to being specific about the domain. The URL refers to the whole web page address, including the domain name (good reference for those who want more: warpspire.com/posts/url-design/)
Most people who optimize sites for a living agree that having your keywords somewhere in the URL has some benefit in terms of SEO, and that exact match domains, or key-worded domains do fare better (all other things being equal!) than those that don't have keywords in them:
experimentsinpassiveincome.com/exact-match-domains/
But it is important to recognise, as Itai mentioned in a comment, that this is likely to diminish over time:
www.keywordstrategy.org/583/seo-tip-15-exact-match-domains-benefit-future/ div style=" margin: 5px;">
In terms of understanding ranking factors (including URLs/Domains), there's a couple of worthy (but not gospel) references:
www.huomah.com/Search-Engines/Search-Engine-Optimization/Guide-to-Search-Engine-Ranking-Factors.html http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors
It really does come down to Jon Conde's mantra however:
Want to outrank that other site? make sure your site is optimized and then produce great content. Without the great content you'll never get the links you need to outrank the competition.
