My clients often ask me if having the keyword that you are targeting in your domain can have a positive impact on your search engine rankings. The short answer to this is yes.

It seems to be easier than ever to rank highly for specific keywords if you have a keyword rich domain.

I have noticed an increasing amount of domains ranking well on the search engine results page with very low quality content and hardly any back links just because they have the keywords in their domain, some with no content expect from ‘Website under construction’ rank highly on the search engine results page just because they have a keyword rich domain. This was with a relatively small number of low quality back links and plenty of competition in the market.

Matt Cutts said, at the begging of the year, that Google has been accused of giving too much benefit to keyword rich domains and he indicated that Google has been thinking of turning down the amount of weight given to these websites. However, the opposite seems true and it appears even easier to rank on the search engine results page for keyword rich domains. The full video can be viewed here.

There are obviously advantages from an SEO point of view, however, I feel that this is having a negative impact on user experience and is a bit of a kick in teeth to website owners with high quality content but are ranking below websites that just happen to have the target keyword in the URL.

Putting my rant aside, let’s look at the advantages and disadvantages of using a keyword rich domain.

Advantages

- The first obvious advantage of using a keyword rich domain is that it will allow you to rank very quickly for the keyword contained in your domain

- Keyword rich domains can show that a site is very relevant to the particular niche so it may encourage a higher click through rate. Also, as keywords used in search queries show in bold, your domain name will catch the searchers eye

- Because the keyword is contained in your domain, it is more likely that when people link to your site the link will contain your target keyword as the anchor text, even if it’s a naked link*

- A keyword rich domain may be easier to remember so it could also increase the amount of direct traffic coming to your site

Disadvantages

- Keyword rich domains may pigeon hole your site and reduce click through rate if searchers are not looking specifically for your target niche

- Keyword rich domains may provide short term gains, however, in the long term it may be better to build a brand

- If search results continue to be low quality due to keyword rich domains Google may reduce the amount of benefit given to such sites

- Because so many people use keyword rich domains to spam, many users get put off by them as they appear spammy.

Verdict

Keyword rich domains definitely provide short term wins. If you can find a profitable niche with low to medium competition a keyword rich domain can be a quick way to achieve a first page ranking. However, if you are looking to build a brand and focus on multiple different markets it might be a better idea to choose a domain name that is unique to your business.

To get the best of both worlds you could always start off with a keyword rich domain, capitalise on the benefits that this brings and then some time in the future buy your branded domain and do a 301 redirect from your keyword rich domain to your new domain.

This solution may bring a drop in your rankings due to your site no longer having a keyword rich domain, but at least your new site will have some authority passed to it, and it will be much easier to build on that authority.

Google profile results are now showing with the organic results when you do a search using someone’s name on Google.  Below you will see the profile of my colleague, Matthew Marley, this appeared at the bottom of the Google when doing a search for ‘Matthew Marley’. Matthew’s picture appeared at the bottom of the page, right under his uncle Bob, but with some good SEO, you could probably push this  result up.    No dodgy comments please, I know it looks like an advert for Club Tropicana.

What does this mean?

When people want to find out about someone, whether it’s a potential employer, customer or even someone you’ve chatted up at the dancing.  They will most likely go online to find out about you.  Google profiles are a great way to control what people are seeing when they type your name into Google.

Google has, for a long time, used Twitter and Facebook links to help decide where a website will be located on the search engine results page and how much authority a website has.  The game is now changing and Google are now trying to determine the authority of links posted on social media sites, to see which links to give more weight to.

The value that searchers may get from this is that if a website is being spoke about on social media site, then it has social proof and is therefore probably a popular website – this seems like a very logical way to rank sites,  however it is open to mass manipulation and may eventually kill social media sites such as Twitter.

How will this work?

Facebook

On sites such as Facebook, Google will probably look at data such as how many likes the site has. The amount of people seeing the links  and the amount of links individual users actually post.  So for example, if someone posts 10 links per day, each link will be given less weight than if the same person only posted 1 link per day.

Twitter

On Twitter, as with Facebook, cues like links per day, amount of followers and amount of people you follow will be used.  Google has also hinted at that they will look at the authority of the person posting the link to decide how much weight to give the link.  So say for example, if Stephen Fry was to post a link for your site, as he is a high authority figure on Twitter, then this link would be given a tremendous amount of weight, therefore it would give your site a bigger boost than a link from Joe Nobody.  Retweets will also be taken into consideration, and it will be based on both volume of retweets, and the authority of people retweeting.  This is all great news for SEO consultants out there as it will allow them to offer their clients another SEO option.  But is it good news for the social media sites?

How will this affect Social Media Sites?

The more Google uses authority cues on social media sites such as Twitter to decide how much authority to give a link, the more people will be trying to work out how to manipulate this.  What we will see more of is spamming, friend requests, retweet begging and people setting up / joining syndication networks to have their links retweeted.  As a result of this Twitter will become a less pleasant place to be.  There will be more and more people using it, especially newbies, not only to share valuable information, but to promote their business in a way to help them climb the search engine rankings.

A possible solution to this would be to crack down hard on spammers, but there can be a fine line between spamming and promoting your business online.

If this does cause a social media apocalypse, we might see other social media sites pop up that don’t allow search engines to crawl the site, but hopefully it won’t come to that.  If Google creates a good enough algorithm to sniff out spammers and devalue their links, then it may deter people spamming in the first place – but I doubt it.

Gordon Campbell