How can I use a keyword based domain to rank for my existing site?
-
Hi everyone,
From my understanding if your keywords are in your domain name it can help you rank for the keyword.
My site www.pixelchefs.com was affected from the latest Google Algorithm changes, as I used my main site as a testing ground for all my back linking. Our site was a single page with Jquery slide, late February the same time with the Google algo changes we uploaded our new site, larger site with lots of pages and info. Result of that was that home page has PR3 and all other pages PR0. Well I don't really depend on Google for any work as most of my work comes from referrals.......but
While searching for names for my private page I came across the domain name www.DesignOrlando.com, The specific keyword gets 22,210 view per month according to Google analytics and also contains part of the keyword for all the keywords I am after.
I want to use the domain name for my main site but i am not sure what is the best way to forward the domain so Google can start reading my site as DesignOrlando.com
Any Suggestions will be very appreciated.
-
Hi Cyrus,
Thank you for your reply. I have actually removed all bad links from my site ( believe me was not easy) and I have created couple of good reliable links by creating good content. My site actually moved for most of keywords from page 8 and 9 to 1 to 3 and I am very happy about that.
After research I decided to actually create a second site advertising our lower end sites and also our print services.
Thank you for any help
-
Hi Alex, (nice looking website)
This is a really good question. There are a couple issues to address - let me touch each one of them individually.
Do keywords in your domain help you to rank? Yes, it certainly helps - although the power of exact match domains has fallen over time. There are several ways keywords in your domain can help you
- Possible higher CTR (clickthrough rate)
- *Possible higher rankings
- When you have keywords in your URL, it helps you to earn anchor text links that also contain those words, which in turn help you to rank
That said, recent evidence seems to suggest the power of keyword rich domains is not as strong of ranking factor as it used to be. http://www.theopenalgorithm.com/c...
The Google Keyword Tool is famously misleading. You want to make sure you're searching for "exact match" and "local monthly" searches to get an accurate estimate. Using these settings, you'll find a much, much smaller number for the number of estimated searches for almost any keyword. And that number includes all searches, whereas a #1 ranking usually gets less than 20% of all clicks. Sort of depressing, I know. ;(
You could migrate your old site to your new domain, but is it worth it to change? I can't answer that for certain. If you saw your rankings decrease because of a less-than-stellar backlink profile, then 301'ing your site to a new domain means you are most likely bringing your backlink profile with you.
Your new name (designorlando.com) will likely also be affected by these bad links if you redirect your old domain. It will not have an automatic ranking advantage just because of it's keyword richness. It will still take a lot of hard work to get it to rank.
It's possible, if you "burned" your old site, it may be easier simply to start over on a new one, without 301'ing anything. Either way, you'll have to build up new, high quality links, or clean up your old backlink profile.
Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!
-
I already rank for my domain www.pixelchefs.com I dont want to lose the rankings for that . Can I treat the second domain as a new site and start adding in directories and some backlinking?
-
Hi Alex,
Well if you own both domains and you have Google Webmasters Tools set up, then the process is quite easy:
- Go to Google Webmaster Tools (GWT)
- Site Configuration -> Change of address
- Then check the following article: https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=83105
- Based on the article start up the change of address
Now you should be ok.
I hope that helped,
Istvan
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Can an external firewall affect rankings?
For security reasons we are now routing traffic through an external firewall cum CDN. Our server and domain IPs remain the same, but any request is routed through an external IP, which then forwards the traffic. Would our rankings be affected because of IP changes? Thanks Sam
Technical SEO | | samgold0 -
Can an AJAX framework (using HTML5 + pushstate) on your site impact your ranking?
Hello everybody, I am currently investigating a website which is rendered by an AJAX Framework (Angularjs) using the HTML5 +API history - Pushstate methods.
Technical SEO | | Netsociety
Recently Google announced that they are able to execute Javascript and can therefore see the content and links to discover all pages in the structure. However it seems that it doesn't run the Javascript at ALL times. (after some internal testing) So technically it is possible it arrives on a page without seeing any content and links, while another time he can arrive, run Javascript and read/discover the content and links generated by AJAX.
The fact that Google can't always interpret or read the website correctly can therefore have negative SEO impact? (not the indexation process but ranking) We are aware that is better to create a snapshot of the page but in the announcement of Google they state that the method that is currently used, should be sufficient. Does anybody have any experience with this AND what is the impact on the ranking process? Thanks!0 -
Use of multiple keywords that are similar for one local site
Hi I thought that if I wanted to rank a local site for the core Keyword, 'Landscaping Location' that variations of this keyword should be used on the same page. But I recently read that if I wanted to rank for: Landscaping Location
Technical SEO | | CamperConnect14
Landscaping in Location
Landscaping Services in Location that I should use separate page for each term. Is this correct? A small local website will probably only have a few pages and so making up pages solely to go after Keywords can't be right. But then would opportunities be missed? Thanks for your help with this!!0 -
What steps can you take to help a site that does not change
Hi, i am working on a product and services website www.clairehegarty.co.uk but the problem i have is, the site does not really change. The home page stays the same and the only time it changes is when a new course is advertised. The most important page on the website is http://www.clairehegarty.co.uk/virtual-gastric-band-with-hypnotherapy but we have seen the site drop in rankings because the page is not being updated. This page has all the information you could want on weight loss but we have seen the page drop from number one in google to number four. I would like to know what steps we should take to increase our rankings in google and would be grateful for your suggestions. If i put in articles on the site, had a section where we put a new article every week, would this then get google to visit the whole site more and move our pages back up the rankings, or should we be looking at doing other things.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Use target keyword on several page titles or homepage only?
If I want my homepage to rank for a keyword (ie "red widgets"), does it support or dilute the homepage's rank if I use the keyword on other pages? I can see it working either way: The search engine looks at your site, sees that the target keyword is used throughout the site, and ranks the site higher as a result. Using the keyword on several pages makes it so none of them stand out, and ultimately it's harder to rank highly. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | Kyle_M0 -
Keyword ranking not moving
Hello, We have a very important keyword for our website (www.decorplanet.com) that hasn't moved in any direction in over a year. The keyword is "bathroom vanities". Our current SEO company has told us that the previous company has "over- optimized/linked" for this particular keyword and now Google is penalizing us for this. They told us that we need to leave it alone for a while and concentrate on other keywords and this one should naturally come back up (I should mention that at some point, we were much higher than where we are right now for that particular keyword). Many of our other high-profile keywords have been moving nicely to the first page. Keywords like "modern bathroom vanities", "antique bathroom vanities", "contemporary bathroom vanities", but the one that we really want ("bathroom vanities") hasn't budged at all. Does anyone have any thoughts on this. Is it possible that Google put us in some sort of a "sand-box" - I mean we are on page 2 so it doesn't sound like that's the case. It's just very bizarre that we can't seem to do anything with this keyword. Really appreciate any thoughts or input on this.
Technical SEO | | steven11330 -
Can local SEO harm national rankings?
Today I met with a firm called Localeze that provides local directory submissions. I understand the importance of this service if your site is competing locally, however I'm not sure the effects of local SEO for a national brand. Our firm gets most of our traffic from across the country, not just one location, and our business is scattered (which is a good thing). We rank for service related keywords that are not tied to a location. We do not show up for local results so our business in our immediate location is weak. We would like to increase our local presence in search engines but I want to make sure that this will not take away from our national presence. Will optimizing a site for local search negatively affect general rankings? Thanks
Technical SEO | | KevinBloom1 -
Duplicate content domains ranking successfully
I have a project with 8 domains and each domain is showing the same content (including site structure) and still all sites do rank. When I search for a specific word-string in google it lists me all 8 domains. Do you have an explanation, why Google doesn't filter those URLs to just one URL instead of 8 with the same content?
Technical SEO | | kenbrother0