The importance of having keywords in your domain name

This blog has been online since March 2007 but since i changed the domain from bloggingtips.org to bloggingtips.com the blog had a little setback with regards to page rank and getting a good placing in the search engines. This didn’t really bother me too much as the site wasn’t online too long before the last PR update and the extra few months has given me more time to build up backlinks and content for the spiders to enjoy!

With search engine traffic slowly but surely increasing i can start to look more into optimising the blog for certain keywords. There are a lot of ways in which you can do this. You can analyse the keywords rival blogs use, you can research the number of searches a certain keyword or phrase gets and you can also analyse your own statistics. I’ve always found it easier to optimise the keywords of a website once it has established itself as you can look at the search terms which are bringing you the most traffic and go from there.

I have not put too much thought into what keywords to go for up until now – i know im not gonna spend too much trying to get a good listing in the oversaturated search term ‘Making Money Online’. I’m not ruling it out in the future however the blog would have to be doing very well and have a really good search engine presence before i can compete directly with the likes of Darren Rowse and John Chow on this term.

As you will no doubt guess, from the start of this blogs life there is only one search term which i knew i would do well in, and that is the search term ‘Blogging Tips’. Up until now i have not been anywhere near the first few pages of Google for this term but when i checked today i noticed i have jumped up to position 6 for the search phrase*. This is not too bad considering most of the pages here have not been indexed. The Blogging Tips Forums have somehow got to position 2 and 3 on MSN and im sitting at position 8 on Yahoo. In the next few months i suspect Blogging Tips to get higher and higher in the listings for this search term and hopefully in a few others as well.

Have a look at the screenprint ive taken from Google Analytics which shows the jump in traffic from this search term. I’ve not seen a lot much traffic as yet but im sure when more pages get indexed etc ill start to see more of the blogs traffic come from search engines instead of referrals.

ProBlogger currently holds down the top spot for ‘Blogging Tips’ in google but im hoping to dislodge him by the end of the year – fingers crossed. Darren, if your reading this, its nothing personal bud! If i can get a 10th of the traffic your getting i’ll be having a very good christmas

Having good keywords in your domain name

In the last few years search engines have put a little less emphasis on the keywords in a domain name and more on content and title tags etc however it can still be a big factor in determining where your blog is listed. SEO Moz places the importance of a domain name in search engines as moderate.

I’ve seen more and more bloggers using their personal name for blogging websites in the last year (Infact, i’m considering starting a small personal blog myself for subjects which should’nt be covered here). I also know that John Chow and a few others have done extremely well with their blogs using their own name and not a branded name like Blogging Tips.

I do not want to discourage readers from using their own name for the domain name of their blog but unless the blog is a personal blog i would suggest you consider using a brandable domain or one which has a good keyword in it. There are a few reasons why i think it can be better not to use your own name for anything but a personal blog.

• You can sell the blog at a later date – I’m sure that you are not starting your blog thinking you will have to sell it at a later date but it’s good to keep your options open. Many blogs fail due to the time and work required to update them so frequently. If this does happen you are in a much better situation if your blog is not directly attached to your domain name. For example, if for some reason i didn’t have time to post on this blog it would be much easier to sell the site if it was called BloggingTips.com compared to using my own name, KevinMuldoon.com. Most people would agree that the value of a blog is greatly tied to the authors contribution, this is even more so when the blog’s domain name is the main authors real name.
• You can have a good keyword in your domain name – As i mentioned before, it isn’t essential to have the search term in your blogs domain name. However, it can certainly help you give you an edge for certain keywords.

BloggingTips.com is a great example of how the domain name of a blog can help you get a higher listing for a search term. Now every search engine uses different algorthyms to determine the current placing for a website for a search phrase but one of the most known ways of getting a higher placing for a search term is to make sure the anchor text used to link to your blog matches the search term you want to target. This is the reason why Text Link Ads has proved so popular. Unfortunately, other people rarely link to you using the keyword(s) you want unless you pay them.

I’ll use an example to illustrate this. Regular BloggingTips commentator Stephen Welton’s blog is located at www.stephenwelton.com. Stephen has been targeting the search phrase ‘Success Online‘ and has used this anchor text to link to his blog whenever he can. I hope that Stephen does get some good results with this search term however he will find it difficult to get people to link to his blog using this search term as the majority of people will link to his blog using Stephen Welton when they are referring to him or his blog. If Stephen was lucky enough to own the domain name SuccessOnline.com then i’m sure the majority of blogs would link to him using those two words since it would be the name of his blog and his domain name.

This is why BloggingTips will continue to improve in the search engines for the search phrase ‘Blogging Tips’. When other bloggers are linking to this blog and referring to it they will undoubtedly use ‘Blogging Tips’, ‘BloggingTips’ or ‘BloggingTips.com’ as thats the name of this blog and the domain name.

Summary

I’m not suggesting that anyone reading this who uses their own name for their blog should go and change their blogs domain name. However, if you are looking to start a new blog soon and have considered using your own domain name, please be aware of all the things i have spoke about in this post.

If there is anything you want me to clarify or expand on please let me know and i’ll do my best to explain. I’ll do a follow up post to this in a few months and update you on my progress with the keywords im targeting.

Good luck,
Kevin

* I wrote this post on 24th June so any search engine positions i referred to may be a little different when you check them from the 29th

Written by Kevin Muldoon from Blog Themes Club
Posted on June 29th, 2007 and filed under Search Engine Optimisation
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