Increase Traffic to your Site Search Engine Optimisation

Keywords in Domain Name

NB: UPDATE - 26/12/2008 - Google now recomends that you should anme your URLs relevant to the content.

This one is not so much a myth, more an extrene over exaggeration.

You often hear things like "you have to have your keywords in your domain to rank well" or "having keywords in your URLs gives you a good rank", both of which are completely inaccurate.

Now having keywords in your URL will make a tiny difference to your site and it is preferable to chose keyword targeted domains but this is more because they are obvious, logical and memorable. Chaning an existing URL to a keyword targeted URL is probably not worth it as even if you 301 redirect the URL you will inevitably suffer a loss in rankings and traffic for that URL.

Seeing very long domain names like www.the-best-seo-site-in-the-world.com is quite hilarious. Chosing a domain name should be based on a brnading strategy and a memorable name that is as short and concise as possible. The minimal advantages gained from a long keyword targeted domain will be far out weighed by the loss in direct and repeat traffic.

The SEO Files recomends

Chose a domain name that reflects the name of your company or theme of your site and industry. A domain name should be short, memorable and representative of your brand. Don't chose a domain name based on your primary keyword.

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Tip of the Day

Make sure your use your keywords in your ALT tags. Images have an alt attribute for alternate text. Its important to put your keywords in here as search engines can't see the images

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