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How important is domain name for SEO

Discussion in 'SEO Search Engine Optimisation' started by Slater, Jul 6, 2007.

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  1. Slater United Kingdom

    Slater Active Member

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    How much impact do the keywords in a domain name help with SEO ?

    My employer has asked me to see if there is any way we can drive more traffic to the company website, we've recently had the website redone and it looks good and is showing a Google PR of 4 although using the google link: search it's showing no other sites linking to it :confused:

    I've just registered some keyword rich domain names which are relevant to our business:

    it-support .org.uk
    it-security .org.uk

    Would I be best just forwarding these to the relevant pages on the exisitng site or creating a couple of mini sites that have a link to our main web site ?

    Any help appreciated.

    Mark.
     
    Last edited: Jul 10, 2007
  2. Domain Forum

    Acorn Domains Elite Member

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    IWA Meetup
     
  3. BFTUK United Kingdom

    BFTUK Active Member

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    For a more accurate assessment of inbound links use the linkdomain: command in Yahoo.

    As for keywords in domain names, they are very powerful, creating a 5-10 page mini site around each subject is the way to go and then 'feed' traffic through to the main site using banners or text links etc.
     
  4. stender United Kingdom

    stender Well-Known Member

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  5. paul

    paul Well-Known Member

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    Mark

    Keyword domains are great for exact matches but not much help for anything else.

    If you had domainnames.co.uk or domainnames.org.uk it would be fairly easy to get on the first page of Google for the term 'domain names', however, it would not help you much if you wanted to score for 'website names' or 'internet domains' etc..

    Don't expect them to get there automatically tho, you will still have to do some link building work just not as much.

    Another thing to think about is, if a site has excessive amounts of links all with the same link text it will get punished by the search engines, however, if that link text is the exact match for the domain name it would be hard for search engines to penalise a site for this. I believe search engines allow for this in their algos.
     
  6. Slater United Kingdom

    Slater Active Member

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    Thanks for the advice guys, see if i can earn some brownie points at work:)

    Mark.
     
  7. stevebrowne United Kingdom

    stevebrowne Active Member

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    Domain names with keywords are good for Google at the moment. It seems to treat them very well indeed. Yahoo and Live are either very slow at updating their index, or they don't hold as much weight with them.
     
  8. paul

    paul Well-Known Member

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    You are joking right :)

    domains
    names
    websites
    insurance
    poker
    broadband
    internet
    affiliate
    software
    cars
    vans
    bingo
    games

    etc, etc....

    As you can see it doesn't have to be .co.uk or .com, number 1 for software is a .plc.uk and for affiliate it is a .me.uk :)
     
    Last edited: Jul 9, 2007
  9. i4v.net

    i4v.net Active Member

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  10. stevebrowne United Kingdom

    stevebrowne Active Member

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    No, as I said, "Live are either very slow at updating their index or". Google have pushed a number of new KW domains to the first page within days for me recently (not for really competed stuff of course), whereas Live hasn't noticed yet.

    eg:

    http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=active&q=generate+power&btnG=Search&meta=

    http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=active&q=travel+wimbledon&meta=

    I guess Google is just more keen on them.
     
  11. paul

    paul Well-Known Member

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    I thought you meant they did not work so well in Live, just pointing out they work best there :)
     
  12. Maccke Portugal

    Maccke Active Member

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    Instead of focusing on many micro sites, I'd recommend to make 1-3 sites really good and make them rank.

    Short descriptive domains can be really good for SEO, due to many factors..
     
  13. stevebrowne United Kingdom

    stevebrowne Active Member

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    live and yahoo have both updated now, leaving some of my domains in very nice positions ;-)
     
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