What if it is a domain name

[richwebstudio]

The suggestion is that my keyword food truck be in the URL of gourmetstreets.com. But what if my URL which is the domain name of the site does not contain the keyword?

I cannot change the domain name, can or should I?

Thanks

[AndrewWheeler58]

HI Richard,

While it is commonly regarded that a keyword loaded URL is a ranking signal and beneficial to rankings, you would really want your full keyword target 'food truck franchise' in the URL to get the full benefit you are referring to.

That said, Google is placing stronger focus on 'brands', and the leading SEO's feel keyword loaded domains will hold less value over the coming months/years.

Looking at your website, 'Food truck' on its own is quite generic and will generate a lot of irrelevant traffic even if you did rank well with it. I would focus your efforts on 'offsite' SEO and link building related to people looking for franchise/new business opportunities via blogs, guest posting, local business forums, startup/entrepreneurial forums etc etc for your 'food truck/business franchise' related keywords.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,

Andrew

[First]

Excellent response by Andrew. I would add that you should also create specif pages on your site for some of your long-tail keywords and include those keywords in your URL.

Example: www.gourmetstreets.com/food-truck-franchise-oppertunities/

or like the one you already have http://gourmetstreets.com/how-to-start-a-food-truck-franchise/

[wojkwasi]

Good responses

Having a look at your site.. another option you could look at is to create a "food-truck-franchise" landing page, i.e.: http://gourmetstreets.com/food-truck-franchise (with content targetted to food truck fanchises & links to each different franchise type)

And have all the franchise pages site in a folder beneath:

• http://gourmetstreets.com/food-truck-franchise/american
• http://gourmetstreets.com/food-truck-franchise/chillipeppers
• http://gourmetstreets.com/food-truck-franchise/deli-cuisine

From that "parent" page you could create a whole heap of knowledge base articles:

• http://gourmetstreets.com/food-truck-franchise/how-to-create
• http://gourmetstreets.com/food-truck-franchise/costs
• http://gourmetstreets.com/food-truck-franchise/locations etc etc