Keyword & Descriptive Domains for SEO

I would estimate that over 95% of all websites on the Internet are operated by small one-man shows. The majority of websites on the Internet do not have the financial resources to launch a million dollar advertising campaign. And with hundreds or thousands of websites competing for any given set of keywords, these folks need to use every SEO tactic in the book if they want a decent amount of exposure.

One of these tactics is to use keyword - or "descriptive" - domains.

Anchor Text

Google at present puts the most weight on anchor text. Page-elements SEO proves itself ineffective day in and day out. H1 tags, page titles, and keyword density are feather-weight in comparison to the power of anchor text.

How does a keyword domain benefit from the weight Google puts on anchor text? It's rather easy:

1. You choose a keyword domain. For example, Hosting.com.

2. Whenever others link to your site using the domain, site name, or URL as link text (www.Hosting.com, Hosting.com or http://www.hosting.com/) you benefit from the optimized anchor text.

How People Link

One high profile SEO has stated that the powerful anchor text benefit can be had without using keyword domains. "Just ask those people linking to you to use your keywords in the link text." What an absolutely fantastical statement! If I ask the Open Directory to link to my sites using my keywords in the link text, does anybody actually suppose they would comply with my request? And, directories aside, does anybody have time to go chase down every link and beg the webmaster to change the link text?

The fact is, the vast majority of website owners link to other sites using the domain as anchor text. Of 94 pages linking to iPowerWeb, the majority used the link text "iPowerWeb".

47 used the link text iPowerWeb

17 used the link text iPowerWeb.com

13 used the link text http://www.ipowerweb.com

10 used banners

2 used the link text click here

1 used the link text iPower

1 used the link text Powered by IpowerWeb.com

1 used the link text IpowerWeb Hosting

1 used the link text Hosting IpowerWeb.com

1 used the link text 500 MB eCommerce Hosting

In a forum, we asked if webmasters would be willing to link to iPowerWeb using the link text "Cheap Web Hosting". None of those who responded were willing to link to to iPowerWeb using the optimized link text:

I would use "iPowerWeb" and if they don't like it, they can shove it.

I would use "iPowerWeb" because it's the name of the website/company.

"iPowerWeb." Last I checked they weren't really cheap.

The name of the link should be the name of the company. If they want the "cheap web hosting" part it can be in the description next to the link/company name.

Insofar as we know that Google attaches the most weight to the anchor text of inbound links, we can be assured that iPowerWeb has successfully secured the top position for the search phrase, "iPowerWeb". Unfortunately, that search term does not drive a lot of traffic, so iPowerWeb is forced to spend literally hundreds of dollars every day on pay-per-click search engines.

If they had used a descriptive keyword domain along the lines of "Hosting.com", more webmasters would likely link to the site using the link text, "Hosting.com", and they would be able to more successfully target search terms which include the competitive keyphrase, "hosting".

"But," you say, "Monster.com is #1 for the search term Jobs and that site doesn't use the word Jobs in the domain. If they can do it, so can I!"

Are you Monster.com? Do you have the financial resources of Monster.com? Do you have the kind of market saturation Monster.com has bought with millions of dollars? If the answer is no, you might want to consider making SEO easier for yourself and using a descriptive domain name.

Part II: Keyword Domain Myths