How important are domain names?
-
Hi All,
Question: How important are domain names when trying to rank for a competitive keyword?
Thanks
-
One of the reasons why keywords in a domain name work so well are because when links and references are made to the website, the keywords are typically the anchor text that are in the links. So, you get an extra advantage beyond even the semantic benefit of having the keywords in the domain name. You'll have less worries in the anchor text link building violations because you can build more links similar to the keywords in your domain.
However, it appears in certain verticals, there are more benefits for the exact keywords in a domain. Check out attorney phrases for example. Do some research by checking out specific verticals and you might get your answer in terms of how important or how valuable they can be.
-
As to when this happens - who knows could be a month, 6 months, a year but for one of my clients whose company name is the same as the domain which is the same as the primary keyphrase I am working on improving the link profile so that if any hit somes along it is minimised as the site ranks top on all metrics.
-
From my perspective Google put heavy weight on direct match domains to ensure brands ranked correctly on their exact search. Overtime people realized this and of course abused it.
Right now you have a VERY good chance of ranking on page 1 if you have the exact match .com, .net, .org, or whatever country code you want to rank for.
Obviously removing the weight could potentially hurt Google and the rankings. Imagine all those small local businesses(with no SEO) that people search for everyday that could potentially de-rank. That would not help the user experiance what so ever.
I am very interested to see how they handle any update on this subject.
-
Thanks Lewis,
Any idea when this change is going to be made to the algorithm?
Also, does this mean when the change is made there will be a big reshuffle of websites ranking positions?
-
Currently they are well correlated however following recent comments by Matt Cutts keyword matched domain names are likely to reduce in power so any strategy shouldn't just be based on the domain name.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Redirection of 100 domain to Main domain affects SEO?
Hi guys, An email software vendor managed by a different area of my company redirected 100 domains used for unsolicited email campaigns to my main domain. These domains are very likely to get blacklisted at some point. My SEO tool now is showing me all those domains as "linking" to my main site as do-follow links. The vendor states that this will not affect my main domain/website in any way. I'm highly concerned. I would appreciate your professional opinion about this. Thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anagentile0 -
How to recover google rank after changing the domain name?
I just started doing SEO for a new client. The case is a bit unique as they build a new website and for some reason lunched in under another domain name. Old name is foodstepsinasia.com and new one is foodstepsinasiatravel.com OLD one is a respected webites with 35 in MOZ page authority and with +15000 incomming link (104 root domains) NEW one is curently on 0 The programmer has just that build the new website has set it up so that when people write or find the old domain name it redirect to the front page of the new website with the new domain name. this caused that my friends lost a lot of their rankings was so I believ it was a very bad solution. But I also think I can get most of the old rankings back, but my question is what to do now to get as much back of the rankings as fast as possible?? A) I believe I must change the domain name back to foodstepsinasia.com on the new website ? O B) Should I on the old website try finding the url of the pages with most page authority and recreate these urls on the new website or should i redict them to a page with related content? Looking forward to feedback from someone who have experience with similar cases. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nm19770 -
Domain name with a single digit
I have an existing campervan hire website which is being redesigned, rebranded and renamed (including the domain). The website allows businesses and owners to list campervans for rent to customers. There are a huge amount of campervan hire companies and so not many relevant domain names. Also many are for sale as expensive premium domains. We want something different that will standout. We're thinking of https//:camper7.com as its short and we think it would work. Is it best to avoid using a single digit in a domain if it isnt a 2 or 4 or does it not matter if we think it could work as it would stand out? Any help or advice would be appreciated. thanks James
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Curran1 -
How To Detect Primary Site With Duplicate Domains?
I'm working with some backlink data, and I've run into different domains that host the same exact content on the same IP. They're not redirecting to each other, just looks like they're hosting the same content on differnet virtual hostnames. One example is: borealcanada.ca borealcanada.com borealcanada.org www.borealcanada.ca www.borealcanada.com www.borealcanada.org www.borealecanada.ca I'm trying to consolidate this data and choose which is the primary domain. In this example, it appears www.borealcanada.ca has a high number of indexed pages and also ranks first for "boreal canada". However, I'm trying to think of a metric I can use to definitively/systematically handle this (using SEO Tools or something like it). Anyone have ideas on which metric might help me determine this for a large number of sites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brettgus0 -
Renaming your domain from an existing live domain and SEO implications - Please Help *shudder*
Please see the details below. Site A: http://south-african-holiday.mobi is an existing site that is our best site. It is Joomla 3.1 and runs all our ecommerce. Site B: http//www.southerncircle.com/ is our original and has the best DA but is out of date and pretty clunky. joomla 1.5 and all bookings (tour site) are redirected to Site A for processing. Instead of redesigning the Site A I'd like to change the domain name of http://south-african-holiday.mobi -> http://southerncircle.com So far my reading and research (Thanks MOZ for awesome forum!) has provided me with: 1. Do the SEO groundwork. i.e. remove dead links from both sites. Delete useless content and generally tidy up both sites. 2. Map all pages from site a: http://southerncircle.com -> http://south-africa-holiday/ so that the existing pages that have good ranking will have a home on the new site. 3. When ready do a small sample 301 redirect from: http://southerncircle.com to http://south-africa-holiday.mobi. 4. arghhhh now I'm stuck ..... If I redirect to this site then I lose my http://southerncircle.com domain which is what I want to keep....I just want the .mobi site to move to the southerncircle.com site.... I don't consider myself totally thick but this is really confuseing the *$%# out of me PLEASE could you give me some insight here. I'm sure it has been done before without completely losing the sites seo ranking and sending my site into SEO oblivion. If there are any JOOMLA gurus that have done this I'd love to hear from you as well. Many thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SoutherlySwell0 -
Is a .co.uk domain better?
Hi I have www.example.net however trying to judge if it is better having www.example**.**co.uk instead (as it will be targeted for UK people). I could use Webmaster tool to geographically target UK - however perhaps best to use a .co.uk domain instead. Any views on using a .net ending domain? Many thanks Nigel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Richard5550 -
Does using a sub-domain lessen the effectiveness of your main domain?
For example a website without a blog and is a simple html site with no blogging capabilities. We go out to Blogger or Wordpress and set up the blog portion of the website using something like blog.yourdomain.com. Does this make a difference SEO wise? Is is more effective to be sure that you are using the main domain and not a sub-domain? I have heard both sides before but can't seem to find the concrete answer. Thanks for any advise out there.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | d25kart0