Using Domain Names to Improve Keyword Ranking
| Category: Domain Names | Date: 2002-02-21 |
One of the most powerful factors in search engine rankings is the domain name itself. Registering additional domain names that contain one or more keywords or phrases will do wonders for your search engine rankings. You can register multiple domain names, and have the same site under each domain. You can submit each domain separately for indexing. This is a great strategy for creating successful doorway and bridge pages. Register a domain, optimize your pages for that set of keywords, and set up some links to it.
You may think that all of the good keywords are already being used in domain names, but consider these two important facts:
Domain names up to 67 characters are now legal on the Internet. Although there are few of the old 23-character names left, there are plenty of opportunities to register a domain name with your keywords in the new domain name system. With 67 characters, you can come up with some real impressive names, like "dogfoodpetsupplypetfoodpetsupplies.com" it's not pretty, but don't worry, you're probably not going to use it for your main web site.
Search engines aren't looking for a logical-sounding name that's a human thing. If you're selling dog food, and someone else already registered "dogfood.com" (somebody did), you can register something like "dogfoodyakguts54.com" and still come out better than many sites. As long as the keywords appear in the name (and the earlier the better) you still benefit.
So, what are these long, keyword-laden domain names good for? Well, if you're scratching for that extra edge in the search engine wars, this may well put you over the top, especially since so few website operators appear to have figured it out. How? They make great domain names for bridge pages. Try this trick out yourself, it really works!
As you recall from the "doorway and bridge pages" article (read it now if you haven't already), these are pages which exist solely for the purpose of ranking high on a search engine. They're usually set up for one keyword or phrase. You use the keywords in the title, place it in the META tags, and it's heavily woven into the bridge page's content. Since everyone else is doing this, how do you put your bridge page on top? By registering a domain name full of keywords, and using it for all of your bridge pages, you'll bump your relevance up just a little bit more.
Once you've got your bridge page set up, make sure you have links to your bridge pages buried somewhere on your site, and get as many other sites as you can to do the same it's not important that the other sites linking to your bridge pages have similar content to yours. They can even be "free for all" links pages. The whole purpose of this activity is to make up for the gap between your main site's "link popularity" (which will be based partly on reciprocal links) and the relatively low link popularity of your bridge page. See our article on increasing link popularity for a comprehensive program.
As we said already, this trick does work. We highly recommend that you take advantage of its relative obscurity now, and register a few domain names with as many keywords as you need. It should be relatively easy to make a deal with your hosting provider (if you're on a virtual server) or set up the additional domain names (if you have a dedicated server) to serve up a few bridge pages. It only costs $60 to register a domain name. You've got your list of keywords made up, so start here to find out how many you can cram into a 67-character domain name.
About the Author
Dan Thies is the author of "Search Engine Fast Start!", a concise guide to positioning your site with the new breed of search engines. Visit cannedbooks.com
dan@cannedhelp.com
http://www.cannedbooks.com
You may think that all of the good keywords are already being used in domain names, but consider these two important facts:
Domain names up to 67 characters are now legal on the Internet. Although there are few of the old 23-character names left, there are plenty of opportunities to register a domain name with your keywords in the new domain name system. With 67 characters, you can come up with some real impressive names, like "dogfoodpetsupplypetfoodpetsupplies.com" it's not pretty, but don't worry, you're probably not going to use it for your main web site.
Search engines aren't looking for a logical-sounding name that's a human thing. If you're selling dog food, and someone else already registered "dogfood.com" (somebody did), you can register something like "dogfoodyakguts54.com" and still come out better than many sites. As long as the keywords appear in the name (and the earlier the better) you still benefit.
So, what are these long, keyword-laden domain names good for? Well, if you're scratching for that extra edge in the search engine wars, this may well put you over the top, especially since so few website operators appear to have figured it out. How? They make great domain names for bridge pages. Try this trick out yourself, it really works!
As you recall from the "doorway and bridge pages" article (read it now if you haven't already), these are pages which exist solely for the purpose of ranking high on a search engine. They're usually set up for one keyword or phrase. You use the keywords in the title, place it in the META tags, and it's heavily woven into the bridge page's content. Since everyone else is doing this, how do you put your bridge page on top? By registering a domain name full of keywords, and using it for all of your bridge pages, you'll bump your relevance up just a little bit more.
Once you've got your bridge page set up, make sure you have links to your bridge pages buried somewhere on your site, and get as many other sites as you can to do the same it's not important that the other sites linking to your bridge pages have similar content to yours. They can even be "free for all" links pages. The whole purpose of this activity is to make up for the gap between your main site's "link popularity" (which will be based partly on reciprocal links) and the relatively low link popularity of your bridge page. See our article on increasing link popularity for a comprehensive program.
As we said already, this trick does work. We highly recommend that you take advantage of its relative obscurity now, and register a few domain names with as many keywords as you need. It should be relatively easy to make a deal with your hosting provider (if you're on a virtual server) or set up the additional domain names (if you have a dedicated server) to serve up a few bridge pages. It only costs $60 to register a domain name. You've got your list of keywords made up, so start here to find out how many you can cram into a 67-character domain name.
About the Author
Dan Thies is the author of "Search Engine Fast Start!", a concise guide to positioning your site with the new breed of search engines. Visit cannedbooks.com
dan@cannedhelp.com
http://www.cannedbooks.com
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