As with most matters having to do with search engine optimization, the significance regarding keywords and phrases within the domain name is marked by controversy. Numerous SEO experts reason that keywords and phrases within domain names have no value or perhaps that they should have no value. In my opinion, keywords within your domain name really are a tremendous enhancement.
There is certainly a great deal of conjecture regarding the reason why domain names matter. For me, it depends on anchor text. Most of the organic backlinks that your website gets will be associated with the domain name, used within the anchor text itself. For example, the website link for this site is: http://www.do-it-yourself-seo.com. When someone links to this website using text like "Visit the Do It Yourself SEO site", it increases ranking and weight for this website based on those keywords - especially due to the relevancy added due to the website's domain name, www.do-it-yourself-seo.com.
Therefore, regardless of whether Google does or does not consider the domain name as a positioning factor, it ends up becoming one because of its weighting of anchor-text. My experience is that keywords and phrases within the domain name are among the most significant items when acquiring ranking as quickly as possible.
Many SEO specialists recommend that their customers choose a brand-based name for their domain as it would be considered less "spammy". In my opinion, these folks do not reside in reality, as keywords in the domain name has been proven to be effective. Indeed, organizations would be irrational to disregard the opportunity that this particular SEO tidbit offers.
Of course, it can also be overdone - and along with the majority of things that are overdone it may be counter-productive to one's SEO. Yet another thing to be aware of is the fact that a keyword-containing domain name may not not perform as a result of competitors. If a multimillion dollar company has a historied corner on the market (and the keywords) you are going for, this may not work as well as it would otherwise.
Posted on
Wed, September 29, 2010
by Christopher Nelson
filed under