Keyword in URL?

[Johnnyh]

I have a website that has been live for about 8yrs. I do not have any significant rankings for my main keywords but am now starting SEO on my site. I am contemplating changing the url to contain the main keyword prefixed by my brand name. Any views on the ranking benefits and or CTR benefits.
Example:
Main Volume keyword - 'car leasing'
current url - www.bobleasing.co.uk (made up name)

thinking of changing to - www.bobcarleasing.co.uk (made up name)

Any advice would be much appreciated.

John

[DavidKonigsberg]

I would not change a old domain with links to it for the value of adding a keyword to the domain especially since google is giving less reward to EMD's. Read more about that here

[Andy.Drinkwater]

As David said, you will get nothing for doing this, unless it were a re-banding exercise and was unavoidable.

Stick with what you have and just write more great content as that is where the big benefits will come from.

Andy

[CMC-SD]

Absolutely not, for a few reasons.

1. Google says they've de-emphasized keywords in the domain, meaning the benefit you'd get would probably be extremely minimal.
2. Changing domains can be a complete nightmare. There are several steps in the process where a single screw-up can have a huge negative impact.
3. If your current domain has been around for a while, that may be a positive ranking signal. This is a controversial issue, but everyone can at least agree that an established domain is definitely NOT a bad thing.
4. When you have to redirect all your old URLs to your new URLs, you will lose some of the value of links to the old site. If the old site has zero inbound links, this isn't an issue, but if it has some high-value inbound links, this could be a big issue.

Plus, you'll have to reprint your business cards and letterhead.

[TylerReardon]

I honestly would not change your domain. Domain age - like yours being 8 years old is very advantageous to your SEO efforts. Another thing to consider is that all of the links you currently have going to your site which is probably a lot because the site is 8 years old will be broken. So you could argue that this would actually hurt your rankings rather than help you.

Focus on good meta tags, H1 tags and performing link building and social media marketing for the site. Any effort to improve your site in those ways will be far more beneficial than changing the site name to include a better keyword.

You could also try buying that other domain and forwarding it to your existing domain as that won't hurt you.

[Johnnyh]

Thanks for the response guys. I think I will stick with the current URL and just work hard on all the right SEO stuff and try and experiment with my title tags and meta descriptions to help CTR.

John