Customizing SMF > Building Your Community and other Forum Advice
Name/Domain - should it be relevant to forum content?
JohnS:
I did not say it was not possible to rank highly without the keyword in the URL, but it is easier to do so. On rare keywords it may not make a lot of difference, but if you are competing with lots of other sites it could just be the item that helps you get a better ranking. People tend not to search on rare keywords and if the know your URL already the are not going to search for it, people will search on common keywords and that is where you get the competition.
Arantor:
We're in agreement on that very point, if you read back through my posts. It tends what the forum is about.
K@:
Good avatar, Arantor! ;)
ChalkCat:
Thanks K@, I love your inventiveness, but how are made-up words that include some letters of the subject better than the made-up word I already have? :P Especially ones that are longer to type in....
As for the main subject, Arantor, I think the K@ has been let out of the bag, so to speak ;) (Any perceived secrecy isn't to do with you guys, it's the local politics) There are already a handful of forums on the same subject. We want ours to be different, and it already is different, so we're quite happy to let the others take the "mass" traffic, but we still want like-minded folks to find us. My co-admin and I both feel that these members will find us through our content, but as I said one of our members insists that we need a relevant name as all the others have. I just want what's best for my forum :-\
Arantor:
In which case the odds of people finding you will be based on your content, when you're open, rather than finding you by name - the bigger sites will all soak up the general traffic by keywords etc. and the solution will be to advertise and run based on the unique name and the feel of content attached to that name.
Also note, the local example given of MKAware for Milton Keynes, they'll be searching by Milton Keynes and finding the content that way, or seeing the domain name itself somewhere, which is incidentally much the same way as people will find your site.
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