Keyword Rich Domain Names
Keyword rich domain names apparently give you a boost in the search engine rankings for that particular key phrase, for example if your keyword is “wooden clocks” and your domain name is “wooden-clocks.com” Google would favor your sites rankings for the search “wooden clocks”.
Having witnessed keyword rich domain names shoot up through the rankings on Google and especially Yahoo for the desired keywords, I believe there is some truth in it.
Surprisingly, Google and other search engines have not addressed this issue as this technique can easily manipulate the search engine results with little effort.
How much of an effect do keyword rich domain names have on the search engines?
Well I have witnessed keyword rich domain names with decent onsite optimisation (title tags, decent content) reach the top 10 for competitive key phrases with a small amount of back links. This was achieved within a few weeks of the domain being indexed (the back links were not picked up at this point).
In my mind, this does prove that keyword rich domain names do have an effect, but for how long?
After a short period of time of a top 10 position on the search engines, Google did seem to allocate the appropriate rankings and reduce the position for some reason or another for most keyword rich domain names.
Yahoo’s search results are a different story though, as soon as the ranking boost is achieved, you don’t seem to loose them, even when you don’t update your content often you will still maintain your position give or take a few jumps and drops.
Why are ranking positions dropped on Google?
This is a good question, if we can find out the reason why Google does eventually get smart and devalue the keyword rich domains, maybe we can discover something new about their algorithm, here is my theory:
Google’s algorithm might consider certain aspects of a site before others when determining search engine rankings. For example, Google might consider factors such as keywords in the domain name, keywords in the title and unique page content. Next time Google comes through the site it might then consider other factors which are lacking such as back links, new pages with unique content and of course, the age of the domain name.
This would explain why there is an immediate jump in search engine rankings and then a sudden drop, but this doesn’t explain why Yahoo doesn’t devalue rankings after a certain period of time.
Maintaining rankings on Google
If my theory above is correct, then it would be a good idea to add unique content to your site on a daily basis (this should be done anyway), and try and build a few back links to the site. This will certainly help towards maintaining the sudden boost in rankings and maybe if Google sees your site as active, those rankings will be more stable.
Conclusion
Keyword rich domain names obviously have an effect on the search engines.
It would be a good experiment to compare a keyword rich domain name properly optimised compared to a domain name with a company name, also properly optimised, launched at the same time with the same amount of back links, and then see the difference in the rankings. My money would be on the keyword rich domain name.
Are there any disadvantages with having keywords in my domain name? YES.
You are sacrificing the marketing and exposure of your company brand by not using your company name in the domain, but you are gaining a boost in the search engines by using keywords, you have to choose which technique will benefit you the most in the future.
Any future experiments I carry out on this theory will be published on this page.
