Forum Moderators: open
The most profitable area is the non English area, where competition is not so high and you can gain a lot from your link popularity keywords rich.
I still recommend a "brandable" domain name, which keyword loaded domain names are not.
Not always bigjohnt. If you make the keyword domain branded as you, then they can be branded. That is a great acheivement. There are various ways you can do this. Say your domain is keyword-keyword.com. Then in the site by saying "Your companies name keyword-keyword" you have made the first steps. and brand recognition nirvana awaits.
Example.. domain www.spotted-dogs.com
In your body text and in strategic positions..
Brighton Kennel's Spotted Dogs.com
After some work, people will associate your company with spotted dogs becuase you have repeated it and reinforced it.
Plus you still get that majpr boost for keywords in domain, which to me seems to work very well in Google. Agree very much with bigjohnt however that keyword domains succeed to a large extent because those are the words people will use to link to you. And if a few start linking with "Big John Kennels Spotted dogs.com" then you have come of age as a brander!
Its the same as books. First the title gets known, and then the author. Then the author can write more books becuase the author name start to become more brandable than the first books which made their name as an "expert" in an area.
We are halfway there, using this strategy completely.
there you go... im giving away my secrets!
We do have a three word keyword domain where the keywords make sensible phrases in the 3 word and two word form. eg: china-advertising-channels.com
3 words make sense. so does "china advertising" and "advertising channels".
I see you are referring to domain names of three or more thrown together terms there that don't read like that and chosen for popularity only.
The pages that are near the top may be there for lots of reasons other than the domain name.
Exactly. The idea that a hyphenated domain in and of itself has any significant impact on rankings is a stretch. Every single site I've ever seen that ranks well with a keyword domain is also using the same exact keyword combinations in every critical part of the page.
The most important factor that they all share is inbound link text. Using www.my-blue-widgets.com will help generate quality link text from webmasters that like to use actual urls in their links. But the majority of people will use some variation of the title/description from the page they are linking to.
Kwywords in the domain are just an additional occurence. They contribute, but when all other factors are equal, they don't have any significant impact.
Fredrick Marckini says in his book that some engines "favor web sites that contain targeted keywords in the root domain name" - he doesn't mention which engines. Then I read an article in RankWrite that says this isn't so.
Oh vie...
(By the way, welcome to WebmasterWorld)
What I am saying is that URL/filenames is one of the 100+ items an engine like Google looks at to determine rankings.
The amount it contributes to the ranking of your page is miniscual. It's probably the equivlant of adding an additional alt tag.
The connection between the two gets made when someone does a search for my desired keyword phrase and they come across www.my-desired-keyword-phrase.com at the top of the SERPS.
What I'm saying is that there isn't really a connection between the two. If you take the time to emulate all the other factors involved with that particular site, and you then put that content up on a regular brandable domain name, it will do just as well.
If you go to Google and do some advanced searches you will also find that for every www.my-desired-keyword-phrase.com domain you find at the top of the SERPS, there will be 100's more that never see the light of day.
If you want to check it out, use the keyword phrase search engine optimization. (Since so many SEO's swear by keyword domains, it produces a ton of good examples).
Step 1. Conduct a regular search and make note of the number of sites on the first page that contain a hyphenated domain with the exact search phrase in it.
Step 2. Conduct the same search using quotes to force an exact match. Make note of whether or not the results change much, and whether or not more hyphenated domains show up.
Step 3. Now do an advanced search that only returns pages with the exact phrase in the URL. allinurl: "keyword phrase"
(This search will produce hundreds of pages using cheesy domains that are nowhere to be found in a regular search).
Step 4. Do an advanced search that only returns pages that contain the exact phrase in an inbound hyperlink. allinanchor: "keyword phrase"
After you've done all that, what you'll find is that A) A very small percentage of the top 30 results contain matching hyphenated domains, and B) the handful of sites that do show up well in most of the searches, also use the phrase extensively in the title, headings, body, internal links, and inbound links.
For the life of me, I can't figure out how anyone can look at all that and then come to the conlusion that keyword domains is the ticket to SEO Nirvanna.
And as far as Fredrick's comments in his book, the last time I checked, he was still using iprospect.com as his domain name. The minute he changes it to www.expensive-fortune-500-search-engine-optimization-and search-engine-marketing-services.com, I'll revisit my position on keyword domains. :)
I will certainly perform a few test along your instructions. I am glad to hear that keyword-domains have miniscule impact; there's no fun in that method! I have always concentrated on content, good keyword analysis, etc and subscribe totally to Chiyo in regards to using domain-names for branding - good take on it and especially with sites that have the ol' three-letter acronym names that mean nothing to most people.
Domain names are such a vital marketing/branding identity and can make or break a site that I hate to see them abused and cannot tell people to throw away their integrity on this...
