Is it advantageous to use the term "forum" in your domain?

Will it really help SEO-wise to incorporate the word "forum" into the domain? This is one of the things I learned while reading so many e-books on SEO. The keywords you want to rank for must be part of your domain name.

Is this also true with forum sites?

 

I don't think it matters either way. No matter what your site will still get indexed on search engines like Google even if you don't have the word "Forum" as part of your site's title. I suppose it could help in distinguishing the differences between a forum and a plain Website, but other than that, it really shouldn't matter either way, I suppose.

 

I really don't think it matters whatsoever. There's no point in trying to work a word into your domain if you already have a decent name that you could use. I reckon that the main focus should always be content - your URL scheme and other little things like that rarely make a difference.

 

It may help you a little bit, but not in a major way. You can still have your forum's name to be something unique and not have anything with "forum" or "forums" in it but still rank high for it.

 

I really don't see any benefits of doing this, or including forum in your domain URL. Because you can always optimize your forum's title to include
"forum" in the name.

 

I am going to against the grain in this thread and say that it helps.

I already own a few sites with "forum" or "forums" in it. The success of the "forum" domain or the "forums" domain depends squarely on the niche. For example, I would shell out thousands of dollars for a domain like "AdminForum" than a domain like "PromotionBB." I spent over a thousand dollars just to acquire CODForums.

No offense to Brandon when speaking about his site. I want to make that perfectly clear before I go on.

A lot of website owners buy a domain like this:

Admin-Talk.com but put "AdminForums" as board name just to reach search engines, this is the wrong way to go because then your own domain isn't going to help you. You need to be consistent. No consistency? Say good bye to your market, especially when it comes to domains like MVC3Forum, or CODForums.

I have seen a call of duty forum use "Call of Duty MW3 Forums" and "MW3 Forums" instead of the domain name it uses. There isn't consistency anywhere in the site. That forum stands to lose more than my forum would because my forum is capturing not just the cod forums keyword, it's capturing the cod forum keyword, too. Go figure.

Collateral Damage, baby!

 

I agree with Carlos. I would spend so much more for a domain if it contained the word forum than I would on a brandable domain. I think having the word forum in the domain helps with SEO and potential visitors will immediately know that your website is indeed a forum. However if you have a lot of money to spend on advertising, a brandable domain could work just as well.

 

I could see it helping slightly, but not enough to make a huge impact. In my opinion, having shorter and straight to the point domains are far better to have than a keywordforum.com or keyword-forums.com

 

keywordforum.com works just as much as "short and straight to the point" domains. It's domains with hyphens that suffer unless there's tons of on-page SEO...

 

If you're using "forum" in your primary keywords, then having it in your domain name has a significant impact. Any time you have an exact match domain you can expect huge results for that phrase. I have several horrible sites sitting on exact match domains that rank in the top 3 on google, forums would be no different.