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By Kevin Bidwell
The debate has loomed now for years: Does it matter whether you
use your best keywords in your domain name or not?
The answer: If you want to automatically score better on Google
you will.
Now, before you take me to task and tell me Google doesn't care
what your domain name is, let me explain.
Google may not care what your domain name is, but it DOES seem
to care a great deal about the text in the links others use to
link to your site. (That's the underlined words in blue.)
Case in point: "waffles"
When you go to Google and you type in "waffles" as a search
term, an interesting thing happens: John Kerry's website comes
up 3rd (as of today-it used to come up first.)
Why is Senator Kerry's site coming up here? Simple: Not long
ago thousands of sites linked to his site using the word
"waffles" as part of a "blog bomb."
They all used the word "waffles" in the link text.
How does this apply to your domain name?
Let's say you want to sell Genuine Dominican Widgets. (After
all, the Dominican Republic is really known for two things:
Great baseball players and great widgets.) The most searched
for phrase-the one you want to target-is "cheap Dominican
widgets".
Your best domain name would be: "Cheap-Dominican-Widgets.com"
Most other websites when linking to your site will use your
domain name in the link text, giving you an instant keyword
"lift." While this is only one part of the equation, over time
it can become an important part as more and more sites link to
yours.
Next question: Do I need hyphens?
I recently heard an expert saying "no", citing the way Google
seems to notice keywords in a domain name link even without the
hyphens. Based on some recent experience I disagree.
Let me show you why:
If you search the following terms, you will see wildly different
results...
Build E commerce web site
Build Ecommerce web site
Build Ecommerce website
Build E commerce website
Now, all four of those are very similar search phrases, yet each
one gives different results. If you want to make sure you target
a particular one, you will need to make sure you let the search
engines know where the "breaks" are in your keywords.
Getting ready to build a site? Taking a few minutes to target
keywords with your domain name may pay off with big dividends in
the long run.
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