Oct 25 2007
Cram Those Keywords into Your Domain Name
I’ve never been one of those people who researches keywords and traffic stats to find a new niche. I tend to just build sites based on my interested a vague idea of what keywords I’d like to target and hope for the best. Picking keywords is a science to some people and there’s plenty written on the subject and plenty about it that I don’t know. One thing I do know, though, is that getting as many keywords as you can into your domain name (within reason) will go a long way towards a good ranking with Google.
The longest domain name I have is four words and a whopping 29 letters long. At first I thought it was a ridiculous choice but each word in the domain is one I wanted to target and I figured if it didn’t work then I could always register something else.
The result? After about six months of nothingness, the site now ranks number three with Google for those very competitive keywords plus comes up high for various combinations of those words. The site is very targeted and aimed at selling stuff and I’m finally starting to see some results. The words aren’t searched for a lot but when people find the site, the traffic is targeted and they tend to be in the mood to buy.
The domain name is a bit spammy looking but the site itself provides quality information, provides value to the user and just happens to have a bunch of affiliate links lurking within the content. There’s no way of knowing how well my site would have ranked without stacking the domain with keywords but I have a hunch that it’s been really helpful.
I guess a bit of proof that this might work is another site I have that has a long domain name made up of four keywords as well. This one only consists of one page and has zero inbound links. Despite having virtually no content and nothing to offer the reader except outbound affiliate links the site does well for the targeted keywords and ranks number 3 with Google.
As usual I don’t have anything concrete to back up my mad theory except for my personal experience. I don’t want to encourage people to start registering 10 word domains or anything but, so far, I’ve had some success with domains approaching 30 characters and, though long, Google seems to still like them and I like to keep Google happy!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
I've been travelling since January 2008 living off earnings from the web. Follow me as I bum around Asia and beyond, getting up to mischief and working online as I go. 
I have had the same experience with keyword packed domain names.
With one domain name I put up a half finished page, it still said insert picture here and google tower here on the page. And yet with no inbound links it was #1 on both google and yahoo for those keywords. And as a bonus the one working link on the site was used to hire me for a lighting job which paid over $600 for a couple hours of work.
Another domain name did what everyone had said was impossible. It was parked with an aggregator and yet still came up in the first page or search results for both google and yahoo.
So yeah, I’m a big believer in keyword relevant domain names.
Nice info Kirsty I have had simlar experiences. One thing I have noticed also is if the dot-com is taken for the serach term your after don’t be afraid to get the org or net more so if the com is a parked site or a single crappy page. At present I have not had great experiences with info’s & biz at present its to early to tell if they are not considered like the others but I suspect they are not valued the same by the search engines.
Can you send me the links to the four word sites? I would like to see how you have those setup.
I have been lurking on the site since you started it. Read most of your post on WorkingNomad.
Anyway really enjoy your style info.
I’ve had mixed success with the longer domains with packed key words. I tend to avoid them these days, but they definitely can work in some circumstances. I have seen them fluctuate quite a bit in Google rankings as they have changed their algorithm over the years. It seems that lately they have begun to rank well again.
One that has worked well is paidtodriveautowrap which I never thought would work, but consistently brings in a few hundred dollars a month without having to update it at all - it’s probably been a year since I last touched it. If you can’t find a good domain for a topic that you want to build a site for (which is getting harder these days), it can be a good default plan.
There is a trend out there to go with longer domain names due to how hard it is to get a short domain that makes sense. What can make it work is if you use a phrase that people can remember. It is part of your branding and if people can remember it, all the better for your site. Especially if you are banking on repeat customers.
I agree that keywords should be in the domain. Consider separating the words with either dashes “-” or underscores “_” so that Google can interpret the words as individual words and not as one large compound word. Also be sure to have those same keywords within the content of your site as this will reinforce things.
When I found http://www.TheViewFromHome.com I knew it was right. It rang a bell so to speak, and when marketing offline, I have had multiple people comment on how they thought they had heard of it before.
–
Gustafson
http://www.TheViewFromHome.com
Google has no problem interpreting long strings dashes “-” or underscores “_” Should probably be avoided as the domain will never work a) as a type in & b) for comunicating adomain by word of mouth.
I hope I knew what you all meant here. My husband tried what we thought how the keywords work, but we’re never certain if our technique is working the way it should…or if it’s working, period. Sometimes, I think we just don’t have the time to really care, or maybe we just forget when other things start piling up. Sighhh!
I’ve always suspected that about the .org and .net names but I’ve still never been tempted. I always seem to manage to come up with something .com for the topic I’m interested in. I also prefer to steer clear of - and _ in domain names. I want people to be able to tell other people about my sites and putting in symbols makes that pretty difficult and generally annoying.
Keywords work for sure but decided on which keywords to go for is another matter altogether!