Can the Right Domain Names Get You Better Search Engine Rankings?

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In the quest for top placement in the search engines many webmasters believe that domain names that contain relevant keywords will have an effect on these rankings. An example might be www.hawaii-travel.info. In reality the influence of these specialized domain names is negligible.

Don't underestimate the importance of inbound links

To comprehend why this myth persists, let's take a look at the ranking mechanisms of Google et al. It is known that these engines analyze the links that point back to a site. If many links are pointing to web site X then this site, by definition, must be more relevant than web site Y, which has fewer inbound links.

In addition, search engines analyze anchor text. Anchor text is the text within the actual hot link or the underlined area on the external site that points to site X. If site X wants to rank well for CPA Manhattan it is helpful to have other web sites link to it using certain keywords, i.e.:

<a href="http://www.siteX.com">Your CPA in Manhattan:
Glenn & McRock</a>

If you own a domain name that contains this keyword (i.e. www.cpa.manhattan.info) it is more likely that external sites will link to you using the appropriate keyword in their anchor text. Thus this outcome has less to do with the nature of the domain name than with the anchor text of your link.

Your domain name: choose credibility

Through our own research we have found that stuffing keywords into your domain will ultimately be detrimental. In the end, picking the best web site out of a search engine listing is a function of credibility - and here a believable company name will pull more weight than a keyword. After all, who would choose www.cheap-books-and-cool-music.biz over www.amazon.com?

Many webmasters also need to rethink their strategy of setting up multiple domains to rank for specific keywords. In practice this will only work if all of the domains feature completely unique content and are linked well. If there is identical content among these domains, the search engines will define them as "mirror sites" and rank (i.e. ignore) them accordingly.

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