[Video] SEO & Domaining: Domain Names & Search Engine Marketing
How Domain Names Play a Role in SEO & SEM
- Many marketing and advertising costs are recurring. Re-registering domain names is a minimal cost, but many domains (especially .com names) get type in traffic worth thousands of dollars a year. Some get type in traffic worth thousands per day. And this traffic stream is defensible from search engine algorithmic swings.
- In addition to the defensibility issue, there is a large synergy between great domain names and SEO. Domain names containing your keywords as part of the name make it easier to get your keywords in the anchor text when people reference your company by its official name. This is true even if the domain has hyphens and/or additional words. But domains with hyphens in them are harder to market than domains without hyphens.
- Exact match domains make people more likely to give you targeted anchor text when they mention your website. In some cases a strong domain name also makes a site appear more trustworthy and linkworthy.
- Exact match domains are given an algorithmic relevancy boost in Google, even if a domain name shows little other criteria that prove it trustworthy.
- Exact match domains make it easier to get Google Sitelinks to expand your listing and block out competing sites.
- Exact match domains are easier to profit from search engine arbitrage.
Comments
Love the video blog! And, as mostly a domainer, it's great to see SEO and domains working so well together, albeit by the graces of Google. My goal: to get sitelinks for my parked generic domains... I know I'll have to unpark them and put up content (!), but a worthy experiment.
I didn't know how far you could literally push the competition off the page... powerful!
To get sitelinks and keep them longterm I suspect it will require a good bit of work. As more people look into getting sitelinks they may get harder to get, especially for high value keywords that are not brand specific.
Thanks for the video! Well be posting this vid to our blog!
I have to laugh whenever I hear an 'SEO expert' say that keywords in your domain has no affect on SEO. LOL!
I have always believed what you have confirmed here.
Please let me know what you think of this new free tool we just launched for finding high PageRank expiring domain names by keyword - www.deletedlive.com - has domain age+, WayBack data, backorder ability and more. We're adding more tools each week. (sorry for the plug, thought this might be helpful and relevant)
You'll see by our banners we're firm believers in your message, Aaron. ;) Thanks again.
Hi Buddy
I would recommend the following features
These are great recommendations Aaron, thanks.
Your first suggestion is already possible - no fields are required for any search. We are currently working on adding the dmoz and yahoo info, along with actually displaying age and G & Y backlinks - this should help to filter the faked PR domains.
The 'Top Domains' list is a sweet idea - adding that to the cue. ;) Thanks again for checking it out.
I am loving all the videos. I currently have gone through about half of them.
What are you using to create them? Is it like a screen capture, or just a video camera pointed at your monitor? I just thought of a few places I could use something like to help people change code.
Let me know, Thanks!
These are made with Camtasia.
So I just bought the domain dscsfs.com. The site is going to be about Deals, Coupons, Freebies (dscsfs).
Would it be better if I used DealsCouponsFreebies.com so that I would rank better for some or all of those keywords? I was going to buy the longer version, but I thought it might be too long. Now that I have dscsfs, it is kind of a hassle to type in.
What do you think?
I am not sure that I like either of those URLs, but I would probably opt to make the longer of the two my branded URL unless I thought I might want to change the acronym down the road.
If you feel comfortable and convinced of the value of the names though I would keep both registered and 301 redirect the shorter version to the longer version.
Yes, your are quite right.
But, What if I bought a domain that with a old age but never used in the internet?
Does it make difference?
If the domain has no links and was never indexed then it's born on date does not matter as much. If, however, the domain has been in the index for a long time with even just a few links I think a decent amount of trust is given.
So, Aaron... now I'm curious.
Do you believe that the domain name itself is a ranking factor, and that the words are somehow fished out of it, like Michael Campbell?
Or is this just about secondary effects (if your domain is purplewidgets.com people will link with Purple Widgets in the link)?
Hi Dan
The domain name is a factor. It was not something that was as overt a few years back, but as Google has placed more emphasis on site authority and got more aggressive at filtering out unnatural link profiles (with too much focused anchor text), they have used domain names as a signal of quality to be able to mix in some smaller domains for brand specific queries and the like.
The domain name boost does not count for my-spammy-name.biz, but if you have no hyphens it counts. You get a lot of algorithmic reward for exact match one word, decent reward for two, and a bit less for three.
Here is a post about a domain that had 0 links and ranking in the top 10 above many authoritative sites, based on the domain name. The screenshots on that page unfortunately show me logged into a Google account, but the same rankings held true when I was not logged in.
And I think you and I have both done a good job marketing our SEO books. Why in the world would sites like SeoBook.name rank for Seo Book unless the domain name counts. I know they probably got some decent anchor text, but how many quality links can a site like that get?
You can probably discount some of these examples but I can give you a couple more examples via phone or email (though they would not be for public consumption of course).
this video isnt working :(
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