domain in relation to anchor text

I think this question should stand on it's own

[Buckley]

Hi,

I didn't want the answer to this question to get buried in the other thread re the importance of anchor text.

Anchor text is no doubt very important to any link stratergy.

My question is if you have a domain name that is not hyphenated but includes your targeted keywords will this act as good anchor text.

E.G. You want to optimize for Blue widget. Your domain name is www.bluewidgetshop.com. The domain is the anchor text. Will you get the same benefit as if the anchor text was;

Blue Widget or

www.blue-widget-shop.com?

I think this is a huge point! If the anchor text is so important and links from good pages are important, then this makes a big differance because it's easy to get someone to link to you using your domain name as anchor....they do it by default...but its harder to get them to just ibclude the keywords. If there is a difference then hyphen domain names with keywords in them would be a good start to hitting the top 10 in the serps, and non hyphen domains (like mine) would be a big disadvantage.

Thoughts on this. It would be great to get a clear yes it makes a difference or no it doesn't.

Thanks for your help

[fathom]

Why not, treat this link text as any other link text.

If an internal link >> blue widget shop << would be used or a simple explanation of what is on the other side of the link, rather than attempting to show the domain, filename, and/or directory... why treat an external link any different?

Just make it >> blue widget shop <<

[sachac]

I have my category keyword as part of my domain, unhyphenated, and my site is ranked #4 among two million results for this keyword. Don't seem to make a difference to me. Good point though.

[Buckley]

Anyone else got any thoughts about this hyphenated vs non-hyphenated domains in relation to whether they work equaly as well with anchor text in a link?

[heini]

Buckley, fathom said it: if you use the keyword as single entity, erm, one word, in the link text, you are fine. If the anchor text uses the domain name, which is not hyphenated, then you do not get the bonus for the keyword. You would then get the bonus for the domain name. Google does not recognize the keyword in a compound word.

[doc_z]

I completly agree with heini. Try to search for microso.

[Buckley]

Okay, I'm a little confused now. sorry.

I thought i read in another post related to this:

[webmasterworld.com...]

that the advantage of having your keyword in the domain name vs brand name is you would get the boost in ranking on links to your site that use your domain as anchor text cause the keywords where in there and many people just place your link to your site like this:

www.bluewidget.com (Using that as the anchor text.)

therefore making Google think that your page was about that, cause those keywords that your trying to rank high for are by default included in the anchor text. (along with the www. and .com part)

So my questions are, Is this true? And if it is, does it make a difference if it is
www.bluewidget.com or
www.blue-widget.com

cause if it is true and it does make a difference then hyphenated keyword domains would be a big advantage cause quite often when getting links you have no choice as to what is included in the anchor text and quite often it is just the domain.

I'm sorry if this has been explained or if i'm offtrack....but i really am not clear on this point. I may not have explained myself very well in my earlier post.

Thanks.

[swerve]

So my questions are, Is this true? And if it is, does it make a difference if it is
www.bluewidget.com or
www.blue-widget.com

Yes, it makes a difference. Google does not recognize that "blue widget" is part of "bluewidget". But it does recognize "blue-widget" as two words. To see this do a search for "allinurl:blue widget" in Google, you will see that no URLs with "bluewidget" are returned.

So hyphenated domains are better, all else equal. But in real life, "all else" is never equal. I have read varying opinions here as to the value of keywords in domain names, and the general consensus seems to be that Google does not put much weight on them, compared to other criteria. A "brand"-based domain name may be more memorable to your users and provide more value than a keyword-based domain name...

[fathom]

...that the advantage of having your keyword in the domain name vs brand name is you would get the boost in ranking on links to your site that use your domain as anchor text cause the keywords where in there and many people just place your link to your site like this: ...

Yes & no.

If for example there was only a single ranking requirement as "keyword" or "keyphrase" in the domain name then you would have a substantial advantage over brand domain (an entity/company name).

However, there are 100 variables that determine good ranking. As such, the keyword in the domain is one and since you must assume that the 99 other variables will be apply, sitting here discussion the specific merits as if "all thing are equal" is rather futile.

Content, content and content drives good ranking, and the domain name has little to do with Google grabbing your content and serving it up to Google users. Some members will indicate that a secondary component of "keyword" domain (hyphenated or not) will provide better anchors (or a second variable of that 100)...

Exceptional content provide exceptional anchors... not a keyword domain name.

Defining ones business on a single string of words because it provide an extra point to rank potential and without considering all 100 variables, and in addition the other 10,000 probable keyword that are not in the domain name limits you far more than assists you.

[rfgdxm1]

>I think this is a huge point! If the anchor text is so important and links from good pages are important, then this makes a big differance because it's easy to get someone to link to you using your domain name as anchor....they do it by default...but its harder to get them to just ibclude the keywords. If there is a difference then hyphen domain names with keywords in them would be a good start to hitting the top 10 in the serps, and non hyphen domains (like mine) would be a big disadvantage.

Right. This is a point I made in the other thread. Assuming it is so that Google gives no benefit directly at all to keyword in domain name, bluewidgets.com will be as good as blue-widgets.com ONLY if you can arrange it for all other webmasters to link to you with the anchor of "Blue Widgets".

[Just Guessing]

My guess is that Google does give some direct benefit to keywords in the URL, but much more benefit to keywords in anchor text.

Keywords in the URL must be hyphenated (or space seperated) to be recognised, so the following would carry some benefit for the keywords blue widget:

blue-widget.com
domain.com/blue-widget.html
domain.com/blue%20widget.html

The following would carry no benefit:

bluewidget.com
domain.com/bluewidget.html
domain.com/blue-widgets.html (singular widget not recognised in plural)
domain.com/blue_widget.html (underscore not recognised as word separator)

But the benefit from keywords in anchor text carries many times the weighting.

I hope I'm wrong - Please somebody prove Google is cleverer than this!

[Yidaki]

>domain.com/blue_widget.html (underscore not recognised as word separator)

Do you have a proof for this? I don't have ...

I use underscores a lot. DMOZ uses them. Google Directory uses them. Your above statement would mean that "blue_widget" is seen as "bluewidget" - i have a proof that this is wrong.

[swerve]

Do you have a proof for this?

I believe the proof is the test I posted earlier, searching for "allinurl:keyword1 keyword2" produces zero results that contain "keyword1_keyword2" in the URL. I've tried this with several popular two word phrases, and I haven't found an underscore_seperated URL yet.

To use your DMOZ example, taking the following URL:

[dmoz.org...]

Now in Google search for "allinurl:sites using ODP data":

[google.ca...]

Notice that the DMOZ category is not returned by the search. If not proof, this is certainly very strong evidence that Google does not recognize underscore_seperated words in URLs. If anyone can find an allinurl search query that returns concatenated or underscore_seperated keywords, please post it.

[Just Guessing]

I think swerve has it right - I have found the same on lots of different searches. It was news to me too as I use underscores as well!

It doesn't see blue_widget as bluewidget - it sees it as all one word blue_widget, not 2 seperate words. (underscore is part of the word)

[Yidaki]

swerve, you're right - that looks like a proof. And it made me curious. 70% of my directory categories use underscores. Allthough those pages that have many internal links (large top categories with many sub categories) rank very well, others with less internal links rank lower. I started to link to them from the start page (using a text box called "featured categories").

Would additionally changing the url from p.e. "toilet_paper.htm" to "toilet-paper.htm" give me a final boost for "toilet paper"?

I can change one of the smaller categories to test it. Any bets?

[doc_z]

I would expect that a hyphen improves the ranking. However, I think a direct comparison is nearly impossible since you have to wait until the next update before the "new site" is in the Google index. But an update allways leads to a change in the ranking.

[rfgdxm1]

One other advantage to hyphens. It is more human friendly. People are more used to dividing words with hyphens than underscores. Thus, even if SEs treated both the same I'd use hyphens for URLs.

[Yidaki]

>One other advantage to hyphens. It is more human friendly. People are more used to dividing words with hyphens than underscores. Thus, even if SEs treated both the same I'd use hyphens for URLs.

Yeah, but that's another thing. What interests me more is the ranking in this cases since i would have to change a lot of url's ... and just a few people type the more-than-two-words-url directly into their location bar.

[Marcia]

>>sitting here discussion the specific merits as if "all thing are equal" is rather futile.

I wouldn't exactly call it futile, since it's one of the most important and difficult decisions to make when starting a new site. It's a decision that has long term effects and importance for a site and its ultimate success, far beyond whether Google gives weight to the keyword or phrase being in the domain name or not, and/or how much weight is given.

So many factors have to be considered aside from the relative value of it being within the domain name for Google that it should be thought over carefully.

For one thing, the domain, if it's also used as the name of the site, is used in places other than the domain name itself, which can affect not only rankings in several other ways, but can have a significant impact on name recognition for the site and building a base of return visitors.

Another thing to consider is that Google is not the only crap game in town. Unless someone wants to get into the game of playing around with multiple domain names, right now it's only common sense to also consider others when picking the domain to promote and think beyond Google. Yahoo did buy Inktomi, let's not forget that.

It's far from futile, it's important to make a wise choice.

[Namaste]

what about keyword followed by extensions as opposed to /
eg.

www.allwidgets.com/imported.asp
vs
www.allwidgets.com/imported/

will no 2 score better for the keyword imported, or is it all the same?