Okay, before I make the commitment to a name, I need some input please.

One opinion is to include one or more of your site concept keywords in your domain name -- the search engines will find it and it'll help draw traffic.

The other opinion is to establish a "brand" name. The search engines may not necessarily find it (if I have a website about recipes and include "recipe" in home page or tier 1 or 2 pages then it would come up if I understand right) and if it does come up under recipes people won't click on it because the name doesn't have "recipe" in it.

I'm looking for the *best* answer here: I have a website about recipes. Do I create a name with the word "recipe" in it like "makearecipe.com" because the search engine will *see* the word recipe? If I want to create a brand name "makearecipe" isn't very attractive to me.

OR

I could create a brand with a recipe site and have a domain name like "pinkrose.com"? A name without the word "recipe".

I also see my site later on branching out into other household subjects which is why I'm leaning toward the brand name.

Any thoughts? Thank you!

Josephinerose

To me a branded website and domain name make you stand out from the rest quickly, if you search recipe you will find a bunch of sites that say recipe in the domain name but if you search recipe and find "PinkRose.com" and the title to the listing is "Make A Recipe Your Kids Will Love" I would be more interested in this link.

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i thought about a recipe site last year. i went for something that was catchy getyourcookon

it had the word cook rather than recipe, and sometimes that pulls up better than recipe, and i put it in with something i thought was catchy that would help people remember it.

Good points here. Your description meta tag:

<meta name="description" content=[What You Put Here...

is what shows up on the google search for people to read. That probably determines which of the top searches is chosen by most people.

Still, if you can get a good relevant name it is great, just harder to do.

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Your Title and your description are most important and they should have your key words you are targeting.

I have read somewhere that you H1 tags that is title to the page helps as well.

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It doesn't matter if you have pinkroses (dot) com or pink-roses(dot)com. I've seen site with Domain name with absolutely nothing to do with topic and still rank top in SERPS

What matters is your content.

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Thanks everyone for your input! I've decided to name my site with something other than "recipe" in it, hoping to establish a "brand name". Now, I just have to come up with a name!!

Josephinerose