Search Engine Ranking Optimization - The Importance of the Domain Name
How important are domain names in search engine ranking optimization
? The short and quick answer is that they are very important. I recently consulted with a graphic designer who had created a content rich website showcasing his considerable talent. Over the past 6 months his site had received only 14 visitors!
The website was built with no consideration for search engine optimization. His domain name was the name of his firm; lastnamedesign.com. This coupled with the fact that his content wasn't built around keywords means that his site isn't appearing in any search results.
This is one of the biggest mistakes Internet Marketers make, choosing a domain name with no relevance to their site. Forget cutesy and cool, think keywords.
If I do a search for "social media" the following results appear:
Social media - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses web-based technologies to turn ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media - Cached - Similar
SocialMedia.com
SocialMedia.com turns standard ad units into social experiences that resonate ... much more all of which can be broke down into relevant social insights. ...
www.socialmedia.com/ - Cached - Similar
Social media news and business strategies blog | Socialmedia.biz
Instead of suggesting a solution for managing all the traditional and social media content, McCracken offered up a tip to try to respond to things ...
www.socialmedia.biz/ - Cached - Similar
Concept:Social media
Customers will be able to book their dream vacation trips with Marlin Travel on walmart.ca MONTREAL, Oct. 1 /PRNewswire/ - To view this Social Media Release ...
www.wikinvest.com/concept/Social_media - Cached - Similar
Alltop - Top Social Media News
All the Social Media news and headlines from across the web.
social-media.alltop.com/ - Cached - Similar
Social media news, strategy, tools, and techniques | Social Media ...
Social media is all the rage for more than just online businesses: traditional "brick and mortar" businesses like yours are using it too. ...
www.socialmediatoday.com/ - Cached - Similar
What is Social Media? What are Social Media Sites?
Social media is a phrase that is tossed around a lot these days but can be difficult to pinpoint based on how broad a term social media is and individual ...
webtrends.about.com/od/web20/a/social-media.htm - Cached - Similar
Social Media News and Web Tips Mashable The Social Media Guide
Social Media news blog covering cool new websites and social networks: Facebook, Google, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube. The latest web technology news, ...
mashable.com/ - Cached - Similar
Of the top 8 results, 4 have the keyword phrase "social media" in the domain name. Big social media sites like Facebook and Twitter don't even appear in the results. This demonstrates how a domain name with the targeted keywords in it can earn a high ranking. This carries weight with the search engines.
Having your target keyword or phrase in the domain name is one of the factors search engines consider when they are ranking your site. That is shown in the above example for a social media search. The best situation would be to have an exact match between the keyword phrase and domain name because you then have 100% keyword density.
As in our example, socialmedia.com and socialmedia.biz are in the number 2 & 3 positions in the results page.
But it is not always possible to buy an exact match domain name. So the next best choice is to have the keywords contained in the domain name. Social-media.alltop.com and socialmediatoday.com, ranking 5 & 6, are examples of this.
These are examples of phrase match domain, the keywords are present in the right order buy are accompanied by another word(s). A broad match domain would be a situation in which the keywords appear in the domain name, but not in the exact order.
In summary, the less your domain name is optimized for your targeted keywords, the harder it will be to earn high rankings. So by choosing the right type of domain name up front will save you time and money.
Search Engine Ranking Optimization - The Importance of the Domain Name
By: Mark Gregory
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