Yes. From personal experience, the domain name does help SEO. If you have a domain that contains your main keyword, it will help you rank, especially for all long-tail keywords that contain this main keyword inside them.

Also, the shorter domain is, it is easier to remember. But also, search engines are aware that shorter and simpler domains are harder to come by. So having a short domain also helps a bit.

This blog, for example, focuses on finance and technology. Having the word “money” in the domain name definitely helps. And nothing is more identified with technology then programmers. So there’s the name.

If you ask then why I didn’t go for TechnologyMoney instead?

I would have but this domain costs over $8k and I don’t think the benefit is that big to justify the price.

I’d rather pay $8k to content writers instead. Simply because content is going to be deciding factor in the long run.

So a domain name is important, but not THAT important.

If you want to get better SEO results, rather focus on finding easy to rank keywords and writing a great content around these keywords.

To find easy keywords that even the professional keyword tools cannot find, read the following SEO book.