Are Keyword Rich Domain Names On Your Christmas List?
Over the past week there has been allot of debate on several of the SEO forums if keyword rich domains have become too powerful.
So the question becomes does having the keywords in your domain name give you an advantage over your competitors? In my testing and experience yes!
Let me give an example, a few weeks ago I was shopping for an accessory for my Harley Davidson motorcycle and typed in the keyword into Google, the first result was for the singular version of the keyword.com.
The website had only a few pages of content and was monetized through Google Adwords. So I thought to myself, I wonder if the plural version of this keyword was available and it was! I then checked Google’s keyword tool and discovered that there were over 2400 searches a month for this common non trademarked motorcycle accessory.
So I purchased the plural dot.com version of the keyword, outsourced nine articles, launched the new site followed by adding a few links from my network and then pinged the new site. So imagine my surprise the following week when I Googled the keyword and found that my new website had knocked off the #1 singular version.
One other advantage I have found when having keywords in your domain name is that you don’t have to sweat using targeted anchor tags when adding your website to directories that do not allow their use outside of the domain name.
Since I’ve used this same strategy for several of my local clients, as an example www.WickenburgAutoRepair.com and www.WickenburgLandcapeRock.com and have also had the same success.
In fact Matt Cutts recommends purchasing relevant keyword rich domains as gifts on Twitter.
Therefore if you run across an opportunity the snag a keyword rich domain name don’t hesitate, grab it right away
Do any of you also use this same strategy?
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6 Responses to Are Keyword Rich Domain Names On Your Christmas List?
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sweet spot.
Yes, Roy – I’ve done this with over 50 domains, and rankings do come with little effort, although mostly for the exact match version of the keyword/domain name you pick.
But yes, it does work.
Rich
Thanks for your post..very interesting.
KW rich domains will now be on my Christmas list!
Excuse my ignorance, but I wanted to know what “pinging” is and how it works.
How did this help you get the site ranked so quickly?
Thanks
Michael
P.S. I’ve only been receiving your posts for about 3 weeks; looks like I should attend one of you upcoming trainings/workshops
When you ping your webpage/website you’re notifying the services that you have new content on your site and encouraging them to come over and index it.
I bought a few keyword targeted names based around a common theme. The interesting bit is how to link all the sites together to pass link juice and PR.
I didn’t purchase my sites anonymously and even installed Google analytics on them (DOH), so there’s a huge fingerprint and I’ll probably get slapped seriously if I attempted to link them. Should I just abandon them now?
If they are working why abandon them, just add great content to them
Very helpful article Roy. I saw an example of this when I searched for a keyword and my website came up below a site with that keyword in the URL, and it was still under construction.