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Domain Names and SEO

The dream of every web entrepreneur is to achieve the holy grail of Internet marketing: tons of organic traffic making a passive income. Organic traffic, as you may know, is traffic from search engines or address bar type-ins (someone typing in your domain name, for example). Organic traffic is free and can be highly targeted. I think you can see why it's so highly sought after.

Ever since Google came along and pretty much rewrote how search engines work web masters have been trying to make their website(s) "optimized" so that they appear high in search engine rankings (and bring in more organic traffic as a result). Web masters have been attempting to make their websites more search engine friendly by adding relevant content or related back links.

But this article isn't about that. This article is relating directly to your domain name. A question that a lot of new internet marketers, entrepreneurs, and business owners are continually asking is "does your domain name make a difference in search engine rankings?". To make a long explanation short, it absolutely does.

I'll use an example to illustrate this point. Let's say that you're trying to become the number one website under the search phrase "Discount Computer Software". In order for your website to be considered relevant by a search engine it needs to have three things:

1. Content. Your website should have content related to the phrase "Discount Computer Software". This could be articles that you've written talking about different ways to buy discount computer software, or perhaps a message board related to it. Either way, if your website doesn't have any content related to your topic you are not going to get indexed for it.

2. A relevant domain name. If your domain name is "www.carsandfriends.com" your chances of being ranked for "Discount Computer Software" are slim to none. If you do get ranked for it, it will be because of a ton of effort and money spent on your part. However, if you're domain is "wholesalesoftware.com" or "discountsoftware.com" your chances of being ranked are much higher. Makes sense, doesn't it?

3. Relevant back links. Links to your website from websites that are relevant to the category you are trying to get ranked for. Having a thousand links from pornography websites won't help you get ranked for "Discount Computer Software". That also makes sense.

Avoid hyphens or underscores in your domain name. The domain "wholesalesoftware" will be more effective than "wholesale-software", at least for search engine purposes. The latter domain style is useful for certain types of Internet marketing or advertising arbitrage.

Keep this in mind when you purchase your next domain name. Target them to the market you're trying to monetize and you may find your SEO efforts will be much quicker to pay off.