The SEO value of a domain name is a complicated SEO subject because we don’t JUST want to look at the SEO value of a domain, but also brand value and how easy it will be for a business to communicate the domains URL in various advertising media like on the radio.
Domain Name Value SEO Tutorial
- Optimizing a Business Domain Name for Google Rankings
- Choosing a Domain Name for SEO
- SEO Benefits of a Good Domain Name
- Internal Links Anchor Text is a Google Ranking Factor, Use it
- Search a Domain for Exact Match Anchor Text
- Brand Building vs Search Engine Optimized Business Names
- SEO Value of Hyphenated Domain Names?
- SEO Myth: Google Can Parse Keywords From ALL Domains
- Business Domain Name Branding Revisited
- SEO Value of Anchor Text Revisited
- Underscores vs Hyphens/Dashes in URLs
- The Right Domain Name helps with Search Engine Rankings
- Indirect SEO Benefits to Domain and Business Name Choice
Optimizing a Business Domain Name for Google Rankings
You might think what does the name of my business have to do with search engine optimization (SEO)?
By choosing the correct business name and business domain name it makes the search engine optimization process so much easier.
As you’ll discover in later SEO tutorials links to a website are very important, in fact essential for high search engine positioning. The text associated with those links called anchor text is one of the most important SEO factors to get right when it comes to optimizing a site.
Get the business name/domain name right and the SEO is easier.
Picking a Domain Name for SEO
Internal links (like the footer link mentioned below) are under our control, we as webmasters can create the perfect anchor text for each page or completely mess it up SEO wise and use Home as the anchor text (SEO lesson: avoid anchor text like Home, Click Here etc…). However, other webmasters linking to your site will tend to do one of two things.
The first is they use your business/site name for the anchor text, the second is the actual URL for the anchor text. Keep this in mind when thinking about a domain name and business name.
An addition to my network of sites (registered the domain May 2014) is https://books-to-read.com/. Not a business site per se, but makes a decent example to show some of the SEO benefits of choosing the right domain name, how the domain name can make SEO easier.
The domain name is books-to-read.com which Google reads as “Books To Read Com”. A Google search for the exact phrase (include the “speech marks”) showed the site on page 2 of Google.
The only reason why the home page would be found for the “Books To Read Com” SERP is the URL, the text COM is not used anywhere in the text or for backlinks anchor text, the only way Google would rank the site for that SERP is if it reads the URL: books-to-read.com and replaces the hyphens – for spaces: Google reads the URL as “Books To Read Com”. As you’ll read later this only works for hyphenated URLs.
Via keyword research I know the “Books to Read” search phrase generates around 90,000 visitors a month from Google, that’s a nice chunk of traffic if I can get a good ranking, that one main SERP (if I can get top 3 in Google) could be enough to make the site worthwhile, and that’s just the main SERP using that exact phrase (lots of book SERPs).
Update: I never developed the Books to Read domain, so allowed it to expire: I no longer own the domain. There’s not much SEO value in a domain which hasn’t had content built and backlinks built for it.
The text Books to Read is a main search phrase, right now the sites rankings are rubbish, it’s a site I’ve not done any off site SEO (no backlinks), so not expecting good results. I regularly register domains with a rough idea what to do with them, add some basic content and never get around to serious SEO work!
SEO Benefits of a Good Domain Name
The 1st SEO benefit is since Google reads the URL of a domain and uses hyphens (and dots) as separators (spaces) the domain is exact match to the Books to Read search: as I work on the sites SEO it will get a natural boost for that main keyphrase.
2nd SEO benefit since the domain name is books-to-read, makes sense to name the site Book to Read (in effect the name of the business). This will naturally result in internal links with exact match anchor text to the business name, the site has a footer link back to the home page for example using the name of the site as the anchor text:
When other webmasters link to the site they’ll tend to either use the name of the site “Books to Read” or the URL of the site “https://books-to-read.com” as anchor text, the first example is exact match, the URL version includes exact match (Google reads it as “https books to read com” – search for this in Google).
Like I said this isn’t exactly a business domain, if it was and I was creating a new business and branding mattered I might have gone for a domain name like amazon-books-to-read.tld and name the business “Amazon Books to Read” or “Amazon Books”**
**This is just an example, since there’s already a book business called Amazon I wouldn’t use the above example (trademark issues), but as a hypothetical example it’s a good one for businesses who want a good SEO domain whilst still include branding: if you have an enormous branding budget like Amazon has you don’t have to worry as much about the URL.
When webmasters link to “Amazon Books to Read” they’ll tend to use anchor text
- “Amazon Books to Read”
- “Books to Read”
- “Amazon Books”
- “Amazon” – if it became a big brand.
- “amazon-books-to-read.tld” : Google reads as “https amazon books to read tld”
All of which either help with the main SERPs or branding.
If you have picked the business name and domain name without considering how webmasters add backlinks in the real world it won’t help your site in the search engines since links to your site will not use the best anchor text.
Internal Links Anchor Text is a Google Ranking Factor, Use it.
SEO training: The right anchor text, keyword rich anchor text is essential to good search engine rankings.
Here’s a quick SEO lesson on how to choose relevant internal webpages to link to without using SEO tools.
Note above how I’ve linked to another webpage on this site using the anchor text “search engine rankings”, here’s how I decided which webpage to link to.
First I decided what text I wanted to link from, for the link above it’s the text “search engine rankings”.
Second I did a Google site: search for this domain specifically looking for webpages that use that exact phrase (simply add the phrase “search engine rankings” between “speech marks”).
This lists all indexed webpages on the domain using the exact phrase “search engine rankings”.
The top results will tend to be the most relevant, link to one of them.
Search a Domain for Exact Match Anchor Text
If the above isn’t clear copy the text below into a Google search and it will all become clear.
site:https://seo-gold.com/ "search engine rankings"We now have a list of internal webpages Google considers the most important for that keyword phrase.
Check the results (31 of them plus images, first 1 shown above) for a relevant match, the first result was the webpage I linked to.
Google considers the URL I linked to as the most important page on this site for the SERP Search Engine Rankings. I’m now linking to that page from here which suggests to Google this page and the page I’m linking to might be important for the search engine rankings search result, so I’m confirming what Google has already determined (that’s what the Google site search exact match told me) and adding even more relevance.
Brand Building vs Search Engine Optimized Business Names
Zeus Thrones may sound great for a company selling high quality toilets, but it’s not going to help potential online customers find your carefully crafted website via the major search engines. Unless you have a large advertising budget for branding purposes (like Amazon had/has) your potential customers won’t know your business or your website even exists.
If you have a site about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for example a good business name (for optimization reasons) would be Search Engine Optimization or SEO and the domain name would be search-engine-optimization.tld or seo.tld respectively.
SEO lesson: tld being com, net, co.uk etc… SEO wise doesn’t really matter what the domain type is, Google doesn’t care, .info is equal to .com.
There are other considerations to take into account when choosing a business and domain name including branding and of course available domain names, so compromises have to be made. For example when deciding on a business name and domain name for this website I knew I couldn’t have the ideal domain names (for optimization reasons) because others already owned them.
After a little keyword research at Wordtracker and checking various domains, settled on https://seo-gold.com/ and general site name SEO Gold Search Engine Optimization Services (or in short SEO Gold).
SEO Value of Hyphenated Domain Names?
Why seo-gold.com (hyphenated) and not seogold.com (non-hyphenated)?
The current main search engine (Google) doesn’t recognize the individual words from the above non-hyphenated domain name (seogold is not the same as seo-gold), so they would not help future optimization plans. The hyphenated domain seo-gold.com is seen by Google as-
seo gold com since Google treats . (dots) and – (hyphens) as a space. We say “Google can parse those keywords out of the domain name”.
Note a domain with a single keyword (i.e keyword.tld) will have the single keyword recognized since Google sees the dot (in the example above) as a space (sees keyword tld). So when choosing a domain name either go with a single keyword domain (like seo.com if available) or have multiple (or at least one) keyword(s) separated by hyphens (like seo-gold.com).
Since writing this tutorial many years ago the above has not changed, it’s 2020 and if I had to make this decision today I’d make a similar choice.
SEO Myth: Google Can Parse Keywords From ALL Domains
SEO guidance: So you believe Google can parse SEO Gold from seogold. Tell me, which keywords should Google parse from these domain names (all real examples BTW):
- speedofart.com : Speed of Art or Speedo Fart?
- whorepresents.com : Who Represents or Whore Presents?
- expertsexchange.com : Experts Exchange or Expert Sex Change?
- penisland.net : Pen Island or Penis Land?
- lesbocages.com : Les Bocages or Lesbo Cages?
- therapistinabox.com : Therapist in a Box or The Rapist in a Box?
I kid you not, these are real examples, go check them out (some are no longer live).
And why do they have to only be relatively long ‘real’ words, why not for therapistinabox.com “the rap ist in ab ox” or did the owner want the SERPs “th er apist ina box”?
Yes in theory Google could try to determine what the domain might be about from the domain name, but imagine the computational power wasted on trying to figure out all possible permutations of a domain name. Google uses the simplest way to determine what a domain might be about, it’s either a single word (do a Google search for therapistinabox) or it’s multiple words separated by hyphens.
Business Domain Name Branding Revisited
If branding is a consideration or you plan to tell people about your site on the phone or in person, hyphenated domains are harder to verbalize. So seo-gold.com would be seo hyphen gold dot com (or seo dash gold dot com) which aren’t too bad, but imagine a domain with multiple hyphens, doesn’t exactly role off the tongue!!
Fortunately there is a solution, register a non-hyphenated version as well and refer to it on company letterheads, traditional advertising media etc… and redirect the non-hyphenated domain to the hyphenated domain via a 301 redirect.
A word of warning regarding multiple domains. A simple 301 redirect (that’s a permanent 301 redirect to be precise) will not be treated negatively by the search engines, but having two identical sites (called mirror sites) might because of duplicate content issues. If you plan to have two or more sites about the same subject make the content different. Changing the background colour or a few images, does not make a site different, you need unique text. If you can’t create unique sites, don’t make mirror sites, you might get your main business site penalized for duplicate content!!
If you MUST have two or more identical sites give the duplicates canonical URLs back the main site. A canonical URL tells Google etc… the preferred version of a webpage (they are page not site based). Every page of a duplicate site should have a corresponding canonical URL back to the main page on the preferred domain.
With my websites I currently only advertise online so have no need for a second easier to verbalize non-hyphenated domain name, so haven’t registered alternatives (as it happens seogold.com was already taken anyway). However, I did plan to add an element of branding to this site long term which is why I went with the business/domain name SEO Gold, it’s memorable (so brandable) and has at least one keyword (SEO).
I could have registered a name like “SEO Search Online Company”, but this is completely unbrandable as no one will recall a generic name like that, but would be great in terms of keywords since all four words are used by searches looking for SEO Services.
If branding isn’t important (say an affiliate site) a generic keyword rich domain name is advisable.
In essence with seo-gold.com we have created a web site that is both brandable and easier to optimize.
SEO Value of Anchor Text Revisited
When a webmaster links to the home page of my domain stallion-theme.co.uk: they will tend to use the following code by copying what’s in the home page link at the top-
<a href="https://stallion-theme.co.uk/">Stallion WordPress SEO Themes & Plugins</a>Using the business or site name as anchor text or
https://stallion-theme.co.uk/Using the URL as anchor text.
In both cases the site benefits from the keywords Google can parse from the anchor text. The first example we have Stallion WordPress SEO Themes & Plugins (four important keyword).
In the second example stallion theme co uk (one important keyword out of four words, not as good, but better than nothing).
So in both cases we benefit just by choosing the right business and domain name.
If we’d of gone with the words combined (stalliontheme.co.uk) version, Google wouldn’t parse out anything helpful in the second example, it would see stalliontheme co uk which is unhelpful since no one will search for stalliontheme! Webmasters who use the business name might use stalliontheme as anchor text instead of the preferred Stallion Theme as well!
The above also holds true for directory and filenames, so when choosing directory and filenames use hyphens like you see for the pages of this site. For example the page you are reading has the URL-
https://seo-gold.com/seo-domain-name/This will be parsed to- http seo gold co uk seo domain name if a webmaster linked to this page using the entire URL! From this we have important keywords “SEO Domain Name”.
Underscores vs Hyphens/Dashes in URLs
Please note underscores (_) within a filename or directory like domain_name_choice are not treated as word separators like hyphens are in domain-name-choice, so rather than parsing to “domain name choice” Google see one word “domain_name_choice”. Try the search in Google for domain_name_choice to see the problem.
You will find a lot of SEO experts believe underscores are treated as spaces, ask them for the evidence: evidence would be pages ranking for a SERP like “Unique Keywords Here” (include the speech marks in the Google search) with a filename like unique_keywords_here.html and the words Unique, Keywords and Here are NOT used on the page or as anchor text with in links to the page. So the only use of those words are the filename and separated by underscores.
Matt Cutts (works for Google) Confirms what I’ve been saying for about 10 years!
The Right Domain Name helps with Search Engine Rankings
There is a direct search engine optimization benefit to using keyword rich hyphenated domain names (and directory/filenames). Google and other search engines using Googles database (AOL, Netscape etc…) will give every page of a site a small boost for singular and hyphenated words within the domain name, even when the word isn’t used in the code. Yahoo and MSN also give a SERPs boost, but it’s much smaller than seen with Google.
Having a keyword within the URL will alone result in a boost for that keyword for every page of the site, so your domain name should ideally contain your most important keyword.
Indirect SEO Benefits to Domain and Business Name Choice
Search engines rely on the keywords in the body text and other areas of code on a page. If your site and domain name is highly related to the phrases you wish to rank highly for adding those phrases to your sites content will be so much easier. Look at the number of times the word SEO has been added to this page just through mentioning the business name SEO Gold, if our business name was “Good Traffic Rankings” for example the word SEO would not be used as much.
The main keywords for this site are Search Engine Optimization, SEO and Search Engine Placement etc… Since the site is (or was) called SEO Gold Search Engine Optimization Services just by mentioning the name of the site we’ve added five keywords to a page.
Quick SEO Tip – add a copyright notice to every webpage using keyword rich text. I use mine to link to the home page using keyword rich anchor text.
If you are stuck with a business/site name already, don’t despair some of the information is relevant to directory and file naming. Also the business/domain name is but one small part to high search engine placement (Google uses over 200 ranking factors), the majority of this SEO Tutorial will deal with pre existing sites.
David Law
Website - SEO Gold Services
Grate and completely right information you have inhere, you seems to be an expert in your filed, i liked your site it’s helpful, thank you.
Excuse me for commenting OFFTOPIC – which wordpress template do you use? It’s looking amazing.
WordPress Theme Talian with Targeted AdSense and SEO Optimisation
I created the WordPress SEO theme, it’s the best WordPress SEO theme available today by FAR.
I made a few minor colour changes for this domain.
David
Update now run Stallion Responsive
article is good. but i have read at many places that hyphens and numbers should be avoided in domain name. however there is no harm in using these in file names or directory names.
More SEO Myths from forums!
You’ll read a lot of bad SEO advise on forums etc… there is nothing wrong with using hyphens or numbers in a domain name.
# https://general-election-2010.co.uk/
Explain it’s SERPs, it’s not even a year old (Google sandbox issues), but is already top 5 for most of the main SERPs in Google including:
General Election 2010 (only Wikipedia above it).
General Election (main SERP: 5th domain listed).
Hyphens are HIGHLY recommended for domain names.
Numbers make sense if like the domain above it’s part of the SERP. I wouldn’t add a number to a domain or a file name for that matter if it wasn’t part of a SERP.
My domain https://stallion-theme.co.uk/ is number 1 for Stallion Theme.
My domain https://seo-gold.com/ is number 1 for SEO Gold.
My domain https://classic-literature.co.uk/ is top 5 for Classic Literature.
David
David,
Thank you for the information on domain names selection. The section on hyphenated domain names has been particularly useful. I have a wider selection now.
Great post!
I’ve got another question: Imagine I have a gardening shop named “Amartinixs”. According to your anchor text rule, I should buy the domain amartinixs.com
Now my question is, is there any SEO benefit in buying the domain gardening.com (in addition to amartinixs.com) and make it point (301 redirect) to my website too?
Thanks!
Since the domain name you mentioned is for sale on SEDO and so your comment might be a way to get a few visitors, I changed the name to a non existent domain name.
You’ve misunderstood my SEO tutorial.
Assuming branding isn’t that important to you a domain like amartinixs.com (and the one you originally posted that’s for sale on SEDO) is a very bad choice for a gardening shop site.
The best domain name would be something like
gardening-shop.tld
gardening.tld
and similar
You ideally want your main SERP in the domain name.
Since domains like gardening.tld are long gone, the best you can normally do is what I’ve done with this site seo-gold.com. I have a main keyword (SEO) and an unimportant word (Gold) that could be used for branding. A gardening example might be:
amartinixs-gardening.tld
amartinixs-gardening-shop.tld
etc…
The hyphen – is very important, registering amartinixsgardening.tld is no better than registering a domain like gfdhgbjkgjy.tld for a gardening shop.
I’m about to create a premium links directory and was lucky that premium-links-directory.tld was available: Premium Links Directory is a main SERP, so the odd gem is still available.
David Law
Hi David. Thanks again for your answer. Interesting enough I picked the first domain that came to my mind. It was purely by chance that the domain belonged to SEDO!
Yes, I think I had understood your post. The reason why I asked that is because I read in another prestigious blog that an important e-commerce company in Spain had bought for a large amount of money a domain that is equivalent to “gardening.tld” (that refers to the activity of the company) that pointed to its website. The actual name of the company (and its main domain) has nothing to do with the name of the activity. The blog mentioned that the company invested for SEO related reasons. So as you can see, it’s an equivalent example to the Amartinix.tld and gardening.tld question.
Could you shed some light on the benefits of this action?
Thanks!
This is a brand marketing vs good SEO domain name issue.
I misunderstood your first question a little.
There is an SEO issue when you use a domain that’s all brand marketing.
I’ve wrote a new article about it at https://stallion-theme.co.uk/brand-marketing-vs-search-engine-optimization/
David
I have a question. lets say that I want to sell Christian Dior purses and that domain is taken. If I choose Dior-Christain.com , then am I going to have a chance to rank high?
also, I was looking at your page rank and alexa rating. Why not as high as it has to be if the above article is indeed correct.
I am just asking this question as I am looking for a good company to do my SEO
The hyphenated domain name like search-engine-shop.tld is better as a starting point than searchengineshop.tld because Google sees the words within search-engine-shop.tld as:
search engine shop
While Google sees searchengineshop.tld as:
searchengineshop
Which isn’t a real word.
You still have to do the SEO work, still need links, optimized content etc… so having a keyword rich hyphenated domain and doing nothing else won’t get you high traffic.
If you put exactly the same amount of SEO work into two domains:
search-engine-shop.tld
searchengineshop.tld
When it comes to the search phrases including the words “search engine shop” the hyphenated domain would rank slightly higher. It’s only a small boost, but if you are starting a new site go hyphenated unless branding is a major issue. On the other hand the above example hyphenated domain wouldn’t help with a SERP like Website Design, so it only helps with search phrases including one or more of the three words search, engine and shop (would help a little with a SERP like “Web Design Shop”.
David
“I was looking at your pagerank and alexa rating. Why not as high as it has to be if the above article is indeed correct.”
Having an hyphenated domain name doesn’t increase search engine rankings on it’s own. You still have to add content and add links and I’ve neglected this site quite a bit over the years.
I registered seo-gold.com in 2004 and got it to PR6 at one point (about 2005) by linking to it from a lot of my other sites.
In about 6 years I’ve only added 21 pages because I don’t need to generate new SEO clients via lots of SEO traffic and have removed the vast majority of the backlinks I control (linked to my other sites instead as they make money from AdSense etc… while I sleep).
If you check backlinks via Yahoo you’ll find this domain only has 200 odd backlinks (including internal links) and that includes the nofollow links. There’s probably about 60 text links that count now (pass link benefit). Under the circumstances I’d expect the home page of this site to be around PR3 now, but it’s not the only domain I own where the PR died completely, but the SERPs remained (“SEO Tutorial” SERP for example).
Although not the ideal way to focus an online business, I spread my SEO type content thin:
45-year-old-millionaire.co.uk
google-adsense-templates.co.uk
morearnings.com
seo-consultant-services.co.uk
Update 2014: in the process of pulling all the above sites to this one, concentrating all my SEO content on one domain.
As it happens 2 of the 4 domains above should have better PR. Google just doesn’t like my SEO sites! I gave free SEO/WordPress themes away on morearnings.com and Yahoo reports almost 33,000 backlinks but the home page is PR1.
When I 301 redirect another domain to that domain and wait for it to be indexed a PageRank update it comes through as PR4, which tells me the PRs been downgraded (it’s a way to test if a domains PR has been downgraded). Like I said, Google doesn’t like my SEO relevant domains, though doesn’t appear to downgrade the SERPs, just the PR.
Might be because I used to sell text links from this domain (as part of the SEO service) and as I link to relevant sites of mine, maybe Google jumped to the conclusion the domain of mine I’d linked to had bought links from me and so downgraded the PR :-)
It’s not downgraded SERPs relative to what you’d expect with the backlinks (I don’t work on links for my SEO sites as I don’t need new SEO clients: I turn more away several times more than I take on), so not a big deal.
Now free-recipes.co.uk is PR4 and has a real Google penalty and I don’t know why! Used to get up over 10,000 visitors a day, now under 1,000.
I know what I do works as my sites make over $50,000 a year from AdSense and similar make money online things (I publish my online earnings minus my SEO client revenue at 45-year-old-millionaire.co.uk).
BTW Alexa rankings doesn’t mean a great deal.
free-funny-jokes.com Alexa 200,000ish regularly breaks 10,000 visitors a day.
google-adsense-templates.co.uk Alexa 70,000ish and rarely breaks 2,000 visitors a day.
One of my newest sites general-election-2010.co.uk Alexa over 250,000 but is number one for General Election Poll and ranked high for loads of other election SERPs (UK general election is due soon, sites had over 4,000 comments and 25,000 votes in the main poll) and is currently seeing up to 5,000 unique visitors a day!
You have to take into account with Alexa ratings website owners (like us) will tend to install the Alexa toolbar for more often than your average web visitors. That means what tech like people visit (tech like sites) will tend to have a much higher Alexa ranking than say a politics site or jokes site which are visited by non-tech folk as well. My theme site is visited by loads of tech like people (Alexa toolbar installed) my politics site is visited by non-tech people (no Alexa toolbar installed).
Even talking about the Alexa ratings or Alexa toolbar on a site can get your rating up since Alexa users search for stuff about Alexa ratings :-)
David
would a highly keyword domain name that is then 301’d or meta-refreshed to a non-keyword rich domain name work for the main search engines? or is this seen as blackhat SEO spam of another ilk?
e.g my company’s current domain name Zeus-Thrones.com has been going too long to drop it but still find themselves in need of better search engine presents. should they then buy fashionable-toilet-seats.com then use a nameserver pointer or .htaccess 301 redirect or meta-refresh on the domain name to get the most form the domain’s keywords and still get visitors to their company named website. (assuming the company really does not want to move their site to another domain name)
If you look at the Brand Marketing Strategy article specifically the “SEO Keyword Rich Domain 301 Redirects” section it covers your question.
Short answer is theoretically yes if you add a lot of links to the new domain you plan to 301 redirect to the original, but not what I’d spend my time and resources on (for it to work you MUST link to the new domain, it’s the links related to the new domain name that pass the SEO benefit).
Since this sort of thing happens in normal business (301 redirecting one domain to another to save link benefit) there’s no reason why the major search engines would treat this as blackhat SEO. Truth is you still have to do the SEO work in gaining links to that new domain and it’s NOT easy to gain links to a domain you have already 301 redirected!
And don’t forget the 301 redirect dampening factor (around 15%) which is similar to the PR lost through a standard link, basically using a 301 redirect this way is like wanting links to Page A by linking to Page Z which only links to Page A, by sending the link through a ‘middle-man page’ (Page Z) you waste around 15% of the link benefit that would be passed by linking directly to Page A.
David Law
Hi
The advise on your blog is very clear and extremely helpful… thank you very much.
I have one question regarding country specific domain names and SEO. I have recently been told by a web developer that google has launched a campaign whereby they give preferred rankings to websites with domain names for countries where the products listed on the website are supplied.
Eg. If I had a website themozambiquecollection.tld, but launched one with exactly the same text (with hyphens), but with the mozambican co.mz suffix would this make any difference to the SEO Google rankings?
Hi there,
I’m establishing an airline, say in Blackpool. It will be called Blackpool Air but as it is very new I would expect most relevant site searches to be “flights to Blackpool” etc. For that reason I’m thinking of getting the domain name blackpool-flights.com and 301 re-directing our other domain names, like blackpoolair.com, to this domain.
Is this a good idea for SEO? I’m trying to balance a branding downside, against a possible major SEO upside. If the search engine optimization upside is very strong, Ill do it.
Thanks.
Thanks for a fascinating and easy to understand article. I see it was first posted in 2006 but from your recent comments it would appear that your ‘hyphen’ strategy is still valid. Is the use of hyphens in multi-word domains generally accepted as being more effective from an SEO point of view? I know you refer to SEO myths but un-hyphenated domains still appear to be sought after as the preferred choice.
Do double hyphens (–) have the same effect if the single hyphen is not available or is it treated as spammy by Google?
What would your recommended pecking order be for domains when the actual hyphenated keywords are not available on their own as a .com, .net or .org? Would you use other TLDs, e.g., .info, .tv, .me, .us, etc, or stick with the com/net/org and add additional hyphenated words (as you’ve done with seo-gold)?
Does the order of the keywords matter, e.g., is keyword2-keyword1.tld any less effective than keyword1-keyword2.tld?
Also, re the use of 301 redirects, is there any SEO benefit in having multiple long-keyword-keyword-domains with 301 redirects to the same site or does it not make any difference?
Thanks David, I appreciate you sharing your expertise :-)
Are the hyphens still required? I was told the SEs are smart enough to find the words.
I noticed that most people go for no dashes version.
An excellent post about choosing domain name to get SEO benefit.
I am thinking about starting a company which will give services to the foreigners who come to travel Bangladesh. I am thinking about purchasing country-travel-keyword.com” or something like that. Will it perfect for my travel business? If not, can you please suggest anything else?
Thank you so much for the great work! :)
We’re shocked at how a lot of SEO’s out there can’t walk-the-walk!
I am currently interested in hiring another experienced SEO expert and are having a tough time acquiring an individual that has the capacity to not simply summarize an SEO method, but also execute the idea by themselves.
Plenty of people can give SEO tips, but very few can actually provide the HTML/PHP/CSS SEO alterations to a web site.
Hard to find good experienced SEO experts to hire.
Hello, your SEO article is very interesting and informative.
I have a question… I own 50 domain names which I am not going to give the exact domain names, I will give an example for my question. I own domains like insurance-quote-in-California.com , insurance-quote-in-Colorado.com Etc…
I own a phrase in a different niche than insurance but in every state. Does that mean that once I develop a basic content site for each domain and get them found by the serps, I should start receiving targeted traffic for at least the key phrases in the domains?
I have a potential for a great set of sites with great potential adsense revenue if that is accurate.
Please let me know your thoughts if possible .
Hi,
Quick question – my new business site megajumps.com.au when searched for in google as ‘megajumps’ comes up to the user as ‘mega jumps’ and give a small option of ‘did you mean ‘megajumps’
As there is a space put in, my site does not show up anywhere. Unless the person clicks on the ‘did you mean’ below, google will not search for single word.
This is losing me traffic – I don’t know what I should do. Get a new domain, change my business name, change meta tags, upload New URL??? HELP ME PLEASE – Google are seriously not contactable and this problem seems to affect thousands from what I have seen. Noon has an answer on how to fix this…..
Please Help Me!!
hi just a quick question if the advantage of hyphenated domain names still relevant? Or has SEO technique progress enough to recognize non-hyphenated domain names?
thanks.
I have heard a great deal of conflicting advice, read a lot on line, read your comments regarding SEO. I have two dental office locations, so choosing a domain name for a new website I am developing to attract “NEW” (not existing) patients is challenging.
I found your article interesting about separating words with dashes so search engines read each word and not between the dots which is how I structured my domain names I have reserved already. However, I am not sure whether to have a domain name with both office locations, possibly separated by dashes such as “office1-office2 or list each separately as a domain name, such as “office1” and then “office2” and have both directed to my “officemainsite” listing or as I have them reserved now with both offices listed together in one domain name without spaces or dashes, “office1office2”?
Because I have two offices I am having trouble as I want new potential patients living near office 1 who search in location for a dentist at office 1 to be directed to my website and same for office 2 but I only have one website and can’t choose one over the other- THEY BOTH have to direct new patients to my website?
Thank you.
My domain name is very keyword rich but I don’t have hyphens in it.
and Google recognises it in the SERPs as limousines in Sydney area code.
I do use hyphens though, especially when there are 2 s’s for eg.
I tend to buy keyword rich domain names but they aren’t always the name of the biz. Do you recommend buying biz domain name
eg. mycompanyname.com.au
and redirect to keyword rich url with a 301 redirect? This wouldn’t affect Google ranking would it?
Thanks
Hi David,
I know your theme is great for when using my keyword in the domain name, but what about when I want to create a blog and I want to enjoy the SEO capabilities of Stallion “but” I won’t use my keyword in the domain name. Is it still good or I will be losing too much SEO benefits?
For example, I want to create a blog with my name or a company name, but will try to rank it for a keyword that is not included in the domain.
Thanks
Héctor
I wrote an SEO tutorial a while back that included information about domain name choice etc… at Domain Name Optimization.
The Stallion SEO Theme doesn’t use the domain name as part of the built in SEO, so theme wise it doesn’t matter what domain you use.
No theme should use the domain name as part of the SEO since few domains use hyphens and only hyphenated domains (like www.keyword1-keyword2.tld) and one keyword domains (like www.keyword.tld) help with search engine ranking.
Note the domain name stallion-theme.co.uk, lacks the keyword SEO, but is ranked number one in Google for “Stallion SEO Theme” and ranks top 10 for “WordPress Ad Theme”. A keyword does not have to be in the domain name for a page on the domain to rank well, it helps, but it’s not 100% needed.
David
I have recently purchased a website for help my real estate business. My website have only one link to this which is my name.
I live in Evergreen, Colorado which is where I want to focus my website locally. Do you have any suggestions on how I may rank higher with SEO on Google locally? I add many links and content on a daily basis and have at least 4 of the big social media attached to my website.
Would love to hear what you think and give some Google Local SEO Tips… thanks for you time.
Sheila
hi sir plese inform me .i want start seo buisness
so how to start this buisness.plese sir send my information step-2 step on my e:mail.thanx