Why a keyword rich domain helps

August 8th, 2006 by Chris

Keyword rich domains are often discussed.

Some people say go for branding and make it unique, some people say go for SEO and use keywords, on the SEO side some people say use hyphens, others say don’t.

It is a complicated issue.

However one of the main reasons I often recommend keyword rich domains is because the second most common anchor text that will be used when linking to your site is your domain (site title is first) and as we all know anchor text is vitally important to search engine rankings.

Google’s new Webmaster Tools (see previous blog post), has a feature that reports the most common words found in anchor text when linking to your site.

In viewing it for my literature site I am presented with the following list:

literature
the
network
online
com

The domain is online-literature.com and the name of the site is “The Literature Network.” Can you then see why those words are the most popular words when linking to my site? Consequently I also come up in 3rd place when searching on Google for “literature.” If my domain did not contain “literature” in it then I might not have as high of a ranking on Google as I do. Look at “com” obviously that is from the domain and it is the fifth most common word found in my anchor text.

It is possible to build a successful site with almost any domain, however if you are entering a competitive field and want every possible advantage it is definitely worthwhile to consider using a keyword rich domain, and certainly keyword rich URLs.

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Posted in: Search Engine Optimization »  by: Chris

3 Responses to “Why a keyword rich domain helps”

  1. TeamGrowth  Says:
    September 28th, 2006 at 8:26 am

    Having an important keyword in the domain name does carry some weight in the site’s rankings in few Search Engines like MSN and Yahoo. Can’t say the same for Google though, but it’s definitely a plus having your main keyword in the domain rather than a simple keywordless domain.

  2. Itomic  Says:
    November 14th, 2006 at 8:48 pm

    I have a theory that the bigger engines (Google very much included) pays noteable attention to PRIMARY domain names that are keyword rich.

    SECONDARY domain names that are ‘parked’ over the top of the PRIMARY domain and take the visitor to the same site largely get ignored by Google (though on occasion I’ve seen Google index multiple addresses).

    Actually I once read somewhere that it is possible Google even penalises against parked domain names – which would be a shame given that there is often legitimate reasons to have parked domain names (for example if one operates in multiple countries or wants to protect their brand-name).

    Based on this concept one might register a domain name like MY-KEYWORDS.COM as a primary and then register a name like MY-BRAND.COM as a secondary parked domain name. This secondary name can then be used for all offline promotional purposes.

    Comments welcome.

  3. Chris  Says:
    November 15th, 2006 at 6:44 am

    Oh absolutely. You want to use keyword rich domains as your primary domain, a secondary domain should exist for no goal other than type-in traffic.

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