Domain Names And Search Engines

[UncleSteve]

Hi,

 

Not sure if this is the best place for this topic, but here goes....

 

Just had a marketing company (MC) on the phone promising all sorts of wondrous things, one of which was that they claimed by purchasing a domain name like 'beansontoast.com' I would popup top in search engine searches when anyone does a search for 'beans on toast'.

 

What does anyone else think of this idea please?

 

BTW, I did a google for 'MC scam', and..... loads of hits came up for 'hard sell', 'leave well alone' etc. and that was the polite ones!!

 

Thanks in advance of any comments etc.

 

Steve

[squalid]

BTW, I did a google for 'MC scam', and..... loads of hits came up for 'hard sell', 'leave well alone' etc. and that was the polite ones!!

 

you have answered your own question :D

[UncleSteve]

you have answered your own question :D

With respect, the companies tactics were what came up in the search. It seems the principle of domain names to match searches do seem to have an effect on getting your site higher in search engine. So I'm now interested in whether others have tried this method and whether they have had any notable success?

[Guest]

as far I am aware your domain name is a primary keyword for search engines. To a certain extend you can outperform competition, although you're with a lower PR in search results, simply because the domain name matches the search.

 

In other words

xyz-product-abc

 

you use it as a domain

xyz-product-abc.com

and you can easily be at the top of search results.

 

PS: of course domain names is an expensive resource so you need to keep that in mind.

[Guest]

We have www.beancoffeeshop .com which is at the top when you search for "bean coffee shop" That does NOT mean we are at the top for "bean coffee", "coffee shop" or "coffee" (I wish we were). I think www.bean-coffee-shop .com would have been a better choice for us (we own that domain also) but for the public we went with the simple one.

 

Our domain used to be www.javaroasters .com and we were top there also, but no one ever searched for "java roasters" except my Mom. And "java" is also a programming language and "roasters" is not specific enough. So having the domain name at the top of the listing is good, but only if it is something that people search for and also something specific to your business and products.

 

The sites title has to also match as for us it is "Bean Coffee Shop" as well as our sites keyword. Having said that there are so many other factors also that play a part as to where you rank, even simple things such as how old is your domain and how long have you registered it for. Then there is the never ending task of getting links back to your site.

 

Be careful when you do searches trying to find a domain, some companies register them as people search for them. So if you find one that is available and do not take it right then it will be gone when you try 5 minutes later (shady practice). I have never had a problem with that on www.register .com so you might want to search from their site.

[UncleSteve]

Thanks Mark and Peter for your constructive replies.

 

Regarding Marks comment on costs, the .co.uk domains here are roughly 5GBP per year, so not too bad, The .com domains are roughly twice that cost.

 

The company the other day were wanting £400 start up fee, then £30 every month. They were also going to provide two domain names (they retain ownership!).

 

Other companies who have pestered me, have a similar start up cost, but higher monthly fee's (one was about 150GBP, as I was a bit green and said that's what I spend on adwords, doh...), but they will do lots more to get your site "on the first page of google", so that means you could be number 10!

 

I think getting my own domains is a minimal cost, compared to having some one else doing it. My site does usually list quite high anyway as I've been tweaking its promotion for several years, plus I use google adwords for searches where I don't do very well.

 

Thanks again guys :)

[Guest]

Thanks Mark and Peter for your constructive replies.

 

Regarding Marks comment on costs, the .co.uk domains here are roughly 5GBP per year, so not too bad, The .com domains are roughly twice that cost.

Steve, by the term "expensive" I do not mean the annual cost of renting a domain. Rather the resources and investments you have to put in place in order to expose that domain. That includes your marketing campaign (advertsing, links etc) which can be extremely expensive in terms of of money and/or time.

[Jon1982]

Having your keywords in your domain definitely helps your ranking. I know this from personal experience and also from the SEO conferences I get sent to.

 

By contrast, having keywords in the rest of your URL helps only a small amount in comparsion (e.g. www.yourdomain.com/keywords_here.html).

[Guest]

I agree with the domain vs. the rest of the URL. For us on yahoo we are #1 for "bean coffee" and #8 for "coffee shop" which bring in a lot of traffic, only #317 for "coffee". Having said that with google we do well on google.ca but not very well on google.com. I think google seems to be targeting more geographically these days and we are in Canada and our server is in Canada. I am sure if we moved the server to the USA we would do better on the .com.

 

We do much better for our domain keywords than we do for our product keywords. I think for product pages you really need to work on them such as lots of text on the pages. Writing articles linked back to the specific product/category pages "can" also helps. For "colombian coffee" we rank #9 on Yahoo which has article links back to that specific page. For "ethiopian coffee" we are #38 which has no links back to it. But then you look at things like "kenya coffee" and we are #7 with no links back.

 

Yahoo seems to go more for (but not totally) links to the main site for categories/products, google seems to be more geographical (server, your address, etc) and also more page specific page links. My analysis at least.

 

So, getting back to your original question you should check out "overture keyword" tool and see how many times your domain name words have been searched for (such as "bean coffee" and "coffee shop") and come up with a domain that will produce high traffic but also words that will not be too hard to rank for (unlike the word "coffee").

[UncleSteve]

Steve, by the term "expensive" I do not mean the annual cost of renting a domain. Rather the resources and investments you have to put in place in order to expose that domain. That includes your marketing campaign (advertsing, links etc) which can be extremely expensive in terms of of money and/or time.

I have yet to pay anyone (apart from adwords and banner adds) to promote my site as I'm always unsure of their 'over the top' claims of what they say they can do. I usually get good positions which has been from my own steady work. I have looked at getting someone to promote my site to get better listings, but who do you run with as its such an unknown quantity?

 

I try little bits now and then, as the other thing I'm cautious about is getting a negative result. My biggest expense is time which I'm getting less of to spare.

[hubcat]

Is there any benefit to having a domain that has the right keywords in the URL, but just forwards to your "real" site?

 

In other words, I sell environmentally sensitive clothing at the ridiculously named site of www.FaeriesDance.com. I currently own some of the more common spellings like www.FairysDance.com, but they have no content, they just forward in case someone types my name in wrong. So the question is, if I buy www.environmentallysensitiveclothing.com (or whatever else that's not so long), don't put any content on it, but just forward it to www.FaeriesDance.com, will it help in any way?

 

Thanks,

Adrienne

[Guest]

Is there any benefit to having a domain that has the right keywords in the URL, but just forwards to your "real" site?

 

In other words, I sell environmentally sensitive clothing at the ridiculously named site of www.FaeriesDance.com. I currently own some of the more common spellings like www.FairysDance.com, but they have no content, they just forward in case someone types my name in wrong. So the question is, if I buy www.environmentallysensitiveclothing.com (or whatever else that's not so long), don't put any content on it, but just forward it to www.FaeriesDance.com, will it help in any way?

 

Thanks,

Adrienne

In general redirects do not help. People using them because it is necessary sometimes; for example if you delete a product you could have a 301 redirect to the "all products" page or to a "similar products" page as it is better than a "404 not-found" or the stock "product not found" default page, the later can endup up as a duplicate with search results (as there is no redirect).

 

With domains again would be better to have some unique content and with references to the main store's content, than a redirect.

[UncleSteve]

I went off for dinner with the intention of asking some of the above questions, but looks like I've been beaten to it, so let me finish off what I started…..

 

I suppose my next question is the best way to use any search specific domain names. The first option that comes to mind is to link it direct to the relevant product description on OSC which is what most people do when they purchase a domain name and use it with their isp's 'free' webspace, but that is in effect a domain with no content, though you can set up description and content tags. So as I have a reseller web space package, I could set up separate web spaces with a search relevant domain names and appropriate content, however for the benefit of others, is there an alternative option to setting up separate web spaces?

 

Picking up on an earlier comment and doing various google search's, it looks like domain names like www.beans-and-toast .com would be better than www.beansontoast .com as the second domain would probably be seen as one irrelevant word not found in the dictionary, so is it better to use '-' or '_' ?

 

Thanks again for every ones input :)

[Guest]

Picking up on an earlier comment and doing various google search's, it looks like domain names like www.beans-and-toast .com would be better than www.beansontoast .com as the second domain would probably be seen as one irrelevant word not found in the dictionary, so is it better to use '-' or '_' ?

Could be true using dash, hyphens instead of a continuous name, but only those who have access to the actual search engine's code can tell. You can experiment by allocating both names, however it takes long time to see what really happens assuming you expose both domains the same way.

[redgorilla]

I can share some my experience and tricks in improving position in Goggle using keywords in domain names. I have launched new online tool buttonsworkshop.com that generate online oscommerce buttons, zencart buttons and creloaded buttons. I'm new to practical SEO but i have read a lot of info on SEO. I wanted to get visitors that were looking for " oscommerce buttons", "zencart buttons" and "creloaded buttons" in Goggle(and also "… button" variant). So i understood that i can't rank one page for all this 3 terms at the top of the search. I got advantage of custom software that we created (I think it's hard enough to do the same for oscommerce. For example it will be good to create subdomains for each categories but that will require a lot of programming work). So i created 3 subdomains -: oscommerce.buttonsworkshop.com, creloaded.buttonsworkshop.com and zencart.buttonsworkshop.com and used according keywords in titles and content all around the page. So result was next... We have launched site 1 week ago and we ranked at the top of the search for creloaded and zencart buttons searches, and on the 4 pages of "oscommerce buttons" searches (there is almost 1M pages with oscommerce button keyword and top 5 domains have keyword in domain name). It's good news. Bad news is that both 3 combination are rarely used so I get a little traffic from natural search right now. So everyone should be careful selecting keywords and using wordtracker or something similar is a must (I did this so it wasn't surprise for me). Don't select very competitive words like 'ipod' but don't select rarely used like " oscommerce sucks" :-)

 

So i think keywords in domain name really help in ranking and using subdomain is also cheap way to get additional ranking. Hope this advice will help somebody :-)

[lifestyleswitch]

What are your thoughts on snagging multiple domains, eg XYZ.com XYZ.org XYZ.info etc.

 

Books I have read said it is a good idea and I want to protect my domain name and will do it if I have to but I don't really have the spending capital to snag the domains for five years as I would like to.

[Jack_mcs]

The only reasons to purchase multiple domain names are to prevent others from using something similar to your domain name and to catch typo's. They won't help with search engine rankings, which is the topic of this thread. It is a good idea to purchase such domain names if you foresee such a problem though. But there can be many, many variations so you would only want to purchase the obvious ones. To see this in action, go to ebay.org.

 

Jack