How important are domain names?
-
Hi All,
Question: How important are domain names when trying to rank for a competitive keyword?
Thanks
-
One of the reasons why keywords in a domain name work so well are because when links and references are made to the website, the keywords are typically the anchor text that are in the links. So, you get an extra advantage beyond even the semantic benefit of having the keywords in the domain name. You'll have less worries in the anchor text link building violations because you can build more links similar to the keywords in your domain.
However, it appears in certain verticals, there are more benefits for the exact keywords in a domain. Check out attorney phrases for example. Do some research by checking out specific verticals and you might get your answer in terms of how important or how valuable they can be.
-
As to when this happens - who knows could be a month, 6 months, a year but for one of my clients whose company name is the same as the domain which is the same as the primary keyphrase I am working on improving the link profile so that if any hit somes along it is minimised as the site ranks top on all metrics.
-
From my perspective Google put heavy weight on direct match domains to ensure brands ranked correctly on their exact search. Overtime people realized this and of course abused it.
Right now you have a VERY good chance of ranking on page 1 if you have the exact match .com, .net, .org, or whatever country code you want to rank for.
Obviously removing the weight could potentially hurt Google and the rankings. Imagine all those small local businesses(with no SEO) that people search for everyday that could potentially de-rank. That would not help the user experiance what so ever.
I am very interested to see how they handle any update on this subject.
-
Thanks Lewis,
Any idea when this change is going to be made to the algorithm?
Also, does this mean when the change is made there will be a big reshuffle of websites ranking positions?
-
Currently they are well correlated however following recent comments by Matt Cutts keyword matched domain names are likely to reduce in power so any strategy shouldn't just be based on the domain name.
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
-
Migrating to a new domain
Hi The company I work for are planing to re-brand & come under our parent company name. This means the whole site will be moved to a new domain. Does anyone have any experience with this and can give me some useful docs to read/any advice? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Http & https domain names
We currently have a site which we found SEM Rush to show that their were duplicate pages for the site. Upon further inspection we realized this was because there existed both http:// and https:// Versions of the site. Is this a problem for Google that the site appears for both http:// and https:// and that there are therefore duplicate versions of the site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavo0 -
Page Authority inherited by domain
Hi there, We (blog.fust.ch) created our blog at the same time as (blog.interdiscount.ch). We're both blogs of big brands in switzerland. But there is one big different. The interdiscount blog ranks much better than we do. But they not even optimize the blog for standard SEO points. Now i found the reason i guess. They get the complete page authority of the brand interdiscount.ch inherited. How is that possible, because we don't..? (Screens in attachment) Best regards Sandro K7zxz ndODO
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sandro_Haag0 -
Changing domain names but still ranking as old one
Hi there, I have a client who changed domain names back in November 2015 but is still coming up in search engines with their old domain name not their new one. For example, I search for my clients name, let's call them Example B. So I search for "Example B" and within the search results they come up top and the title tag is correct as it says something along the lines of "Welcome to Example B". However the URL underneath is actually their old name which is Example A. When you click on the link, it redirects over to the new name so thats fine, but it's just annoying that Example A is still appearing when it should be Example B now. I don't think they have a new Webmaster Tools account setup for their new domain (I need to check still), but they do still have their old one setup. Is there something I can do within Webmaster Tools to tell it that Example A is now gone and to start indexing and referring to them as Example B? What else should I do to make sure their new name is coming up not their old one anymore?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Virginia-Girtz1 -
How to recover google rank after changing the domain name?
I just started doing SEO for a new client. The case is a bit unique as they build a new website and for some reason lunched in under another domain name. Old name is foodstepsinasia.com and new one is foodstepsinasiatravel.com OLD one is a respected webites with 35 in MOZ page authority and with +15000 incomming link (104 root domains) NEW one is curently on 0 The programmer has just that build the new website has set it up so that when people write or find the old domain name it redirect to the front page of the new website with the new domain name. this caused that my friends lost a lot of their rankings was so I believ it was a very bad solution. But I also think I can get most of the old rankings back, but my question is what to do now to get as much back of the rankings as fast as possible?? A) I believe I must change the domain name back to foodstepsinasia.com on the new website ? O B) Should I on the old website try finding the url of the pages with most page authority and recreate these urls on the new website or should i redict them to a page with related content? Looking forward to feedback from someone who have experience with similar cases. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nm19770 -
Can we have differnt Domain name and Busienss name?
Can we have different domain and Business name for website? I want to create real-estate website. I want to registered domain name ‘Nycityhomes.com’ and want to my business name (in logo as well) is ‘Sunny Associates’. Can we do that for local SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexanderWhite0 -
Domain Name Change - Best Practices?
Good day guys, We got a restaurant that is changing its name and domain. However they are keeping the same server location, same content and same pages (we are just changing the logo on the website). It just has to go a new domain. We don't want to lose the value of the current site, and we want to avoid any duplicate penalties. Could you please advise of the best practices of doing a domain name change? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Michael-Goode0 -
Buying a banned domain
Hello all, I've found a exact match keyword domain that I'm able to buy. Problem is that I'm under the impression it might have been banned by google, currently it is only showing adsense without content. The site can't be found using the cache: or site: parameters in Google and the PR is 0. What are your experiences on buying a banned domain and how can I double check if the domain is banned? This blogpost suggests I should not buy it, any other opinions? Thanks. Hellemans
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hellemans0