A Great Domain Name vs Great SEO
I have been noticing a lot these days that many of the websites that are getting into the top 3 listings on Google are not names that most domainers would necessarily expect to see in such a prime spot.
Now we all know that owning a domain name like www.palmsprings.com (owned by brothers David & Michael Castello) is the best position to be in buy far, but many people I talk to on a daily basis think that if the don’t have the premium name that its not worth the time or effort to go after a good Google ranking.
Well there are many cases to say otherwise, the Palm Springs example is the one I will focus on for this exercise.
Now if you do a search on Google for “palm springs” you will see that the number one site listed for that phrase www.palm-springs.org a hyphenated .org name!
Now it only has about 30% of the back links of www.palmsprings.com but is number 1 as apposed to number 2 for www.palmsprings.com so it goes to show that if you want a great Google ranking not having the best category killer name should not stop you from trying.
I still believe that having keyword rich domain with or without hyphens will make the job easier and get clicked on more by the searcher once they do see you on Google, but at the end of the day the premium generic name will get what the hyphenated .org’s or .net’s will never get, TYPE IN TRAFFIC!
So my point is don’t discount other names if you are just looking for good search rankings and traffic because a name you could hand register or pick up cheap in the drops or aftermarket can do a pretty good job if you play your cards right with SEO etc.
If you have any other examples you would like to share please feel free to post them.
Have a great day.
Leonard Britt | Mar 30, 2009 | Reply
I have a three-word .COM domain which receives some 200+ visitors a day. SEO Book once showed some small number of searches for the phrase but currently shows zero so it is not a highly-searched for phrase. It is a nice keyword domain and once was a developed site. The bulk of this traffic is result of backlinks not search engine or direct navigation traffic. And the current content is nothing more than a SEDO parked page. This is not to refute the value of direct navigation traffic or being on page one of Google. But how many sites out of the thousands or millions that exist within any particular theme can make it onto page one of Google? And how much will a domainer who has a .COM domain with meaningful type-in traffic demand for it?
Mark Fulton | Mar 30, 2009 | Reply
I agree that a keyword .com domain name alone doesn’t magically get you the rankings.
Palm-Springs.org maybe ranked first because it is receiving authority backlinks from government (.gov) and likely educational (.edu) institutions.
wannadevelop.com | Mar 30, 2009 | Reply
Lets say the first three results are;
#1 .org
#2 .net
#3 .com
Guess which one gets clicked on the most??
Yup, the .com each and everytime.
Users trust .com more than anything else.. Even if it is #4 or #5 if the result is visible.. They will click on it.
Mike
edkeaysm | Mar 30, 2009 | Reply
Hey Mike,
I agree with you in part but not in whole.
I have been marketing online since 2003 focusing on SEO & Google AdWords and have tracked, tested & measured thousands of ad campaigns over the years.
What I can say for sure is the top 3 – 5 spots obviously get the most traffic and just because its a dot .com does not make it a dead set certainty to get clicked on if its in the #3 spot when running against any other extension. When it comes to search users have been conditioned to click on the top one or two results before anything else.
In regards to .com vs other ccTLD’s for search results, well the ccTLD’s (especially in the markets that I spend most of my time in) which are .COM.AU, .CO.UK & .IN hold their own very well because searchers know that the website is relative to their locality and the .com is very often not.
If I live in Australia and was searching for a Solar Hot Water Heater then 90% of the time the .com.au will win as the .com will most likely be an American website.
So the .com has its place in the US but not necessarily everywhere else unless the product or service provided by the .com website is truly a global product.
Gary Taylor | Mar 30, 2009 | Reply
In response to Mike and dotcom trust, it is becoming more apparant from industry figures that ccTLDs are more trusted than dotcoms in their respective countries. See Nominets industry report 2008.
I don’t want to put palmsprings.com down but its just filled with links and its not the most engaging of websites. No juicy content, the design isn’t partcularly appealing, the meta description isn’t very good and the fact is that palm-springs.org is the Bureau of Tourism for Palm Springs making it very relevant in the eyes of Google
With regards to the links, palmsprings.com does have 14,000+ but it appears a majority of these are from its own pages, pages which as you click further into the maze of links on the site the PR disappears. With SEO a handful of high quality, relevant links go much further than volume, low quality links.
Nowadays more needs to be done than relying on the weight of the domain name itself to rank highly. Especially in more competitive search term markets. A great domain none the less.
LittleDevil | Mar 30, 2009 | Reply
MoxyMedia.com does a great job of SEO vs Keyword terms. Although they own great keyword domains, some of there most successful sites are ones that have done SEO right on.
Jeff | Mar 30, 2009 | Reply
Both the domain name and SEO are just *pieces* of the puzzle – they each provide competitive advantages, but they’re certainly not the end of the story.
An exact match domain will make it easier to rank for that specific term in Google. A good domain name will likely increase your CTR from the Google SERPs. With good SEO, one can make your site rank better than other sites for a wide variety of terms – even better than sites with exact match domains.
Domain Superstar | Mar 31, 2009 | Reply
It seems to me that the weighting Google assigns for the importance of an exact match keyword only domain name decreases somewhat the more competitive that the keyword phrase is.
This may be closely related to the similar concept that in a not very competitive niche on page factors are enough to rank well while with very competitive niches it takes not just on page factors but also off page factors (i.e. lots of backlinks) to rank well.
Just my opinion but I have noticed this play out in example after example in many different niches so I think that it is pretty accurate.
edkeaysm | Mar 31, 2009 | Reply
Yes DS I would agree with that statement.
A keyword rich domain name and on page SEO will only get you so far, back links and many other factors come into play for high Google rankings.