BlazenWeb - 10:52 am on Aug 20, 2010 (gmt 0)

It's only been touched on by a couple of people above, but we all know how important external anchor text is, isn't this where most of the advantage to having a keyword rich domain lies?

I would say the majority of the time when other websites link to your website they include branded keywords in the anchor text, usually this is because people link to your website primarily using the name of your organisation, which is helped along by having branded keywords in the domain name too. And also some people will link just using the URL/web address in the anchor text, which again contains the keyword rich anchor text.

I think it's this inclusion of keywords in the anchor text because of the domain name/branding of the website that has so much affect on rankings.

That's why if I was starting a business I would try to get the most important keyword/s in the brand name/organisation name itself and also the domain name (obviously without being spammy, it has to sit naturally with the potential audience)

Having said all that, I sometimes do feel that too much weight is given to those sites that have those important keywords in their domain name/organisation name/brand.