August 5, 2008
SEO & Domain Names
In your quest to make money online, you're eventually going to come in contact with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In a recent post on SEO, I stated that I had been told that your domain name seems to have little effect on where you rank with the search engines. I have some ancedotal evidence that suggests otherwise. It seems that spending some time choosing a domain name is worth the effort. I had recently put a brand new domain up and posted just a couple of articles to it. 1 week after getting indexed, I now rank in the top 5 for 4 different keyword combinations that are also part of my domain name. But for some reason, not always - sometimes they are exact search phrases and sometimes not.
#2 for stop foreclosure guide
#1 for "stop foreclosure guide"
Not top 10 ranked for: help stop foreclosure guide
#1 for: "help stop foreclosure guide"
#3 for: help foreclosure guide
Not top 10 ranked for: "help foreclosure guide"
While I cannot explain why some of these are ranked in the top 10 and the others are not, it does seem that the domain name has propelled this site up to fairly high rankings (though for very low competition keywords) in a short period of time. If you are going into a highly competitive area to make money online, then you will need every edge you can find. It seems to me that you should do the a wise thing upfront and make sure you give yourself every advantage by picking a good domain name.
If you're having trouble coming up with a good domain name, then I suggest you go to MakeWords.com for good domain names. It's the best resource I've found for choosing a domain name.
(And if you've ended up here because now this blog post ranks highly for some of these search terms - you can get Help Stop Foreclosure Guide there)
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Filed under Traffic by Steven Lohrenz
Comments on SEO & Domain Names
connor from UB Funkeys @ 8:58 pm
I had always just assumed the keywords in domain name did make a difference - is there some debate about that?
Steven Lohrenz from Make Money Online @ 6:38 am
Yes. There are some who think it doesn't make a difference, but it does to a certain extent. But it's not as important as content and incoming links.
Michael Beck @ 9:51 pm
IT would make sense that the domain name is important. I have found that even without keywords in the domain, I have been able to jump above more "static" pages In SEO just by posting frequent on a Wordpress blog.
Making Money, Business Advice Articles | Personal Plug @ 8:15 pm
[...] Lohrenz presents SEO & Domain Names posted at Steven Lohrenz, saying, "Insight into how domains really do affect [...]
Simon from how to make quick money @ 12:20 am
A keyword rich domain name can help, and I have gone down that path for the last 3 sites I have developed, but getting the keyword phrase in the URL is as easy as playing with the title of your posts assuming you have a good permalink structure. Getting anchored links is the key to ranking well. p/s reCaptcha is horrible and hard to read.
John from St. Louis Wedding Photography @ 10:05 am
It has been my experience that a good keyword rich domain can make a huge difference in rankings. This is especially true if the domain is somewhat old.
Dan from Discount Knives @ 2:32 pm
I would have to agree with John as well that a very good keyword rich domain name can make a difference in rankings. Especially if you use a one maybe two hyphens to split the keywords. I wouldn't recommend using more than 2 at the very most in a domain name.
az from addicting games @ 12:27 am
it should impact the rankings and google may add some marks if a keyword is included in URL. Since on titles, targeted keyword should be included as well as in meta description, as google reads it first. and so i guess the URL.
Dave from Good BBQ techniques @ 5:00 pm
It also makes a difference where your server is located, a server with a US based server will do better in US SERPS