best-red-widgets.com

red-widgets-forsale.com

redwidgets-bestones.com

And…if you could get the exact match domain (www.redwidgets.com), meaning the domain name is exactly the keyword phrase you’re optimizing for with no dashes or any other words etc…all the better!  That would REALLY help.

Our real world experience though, has shown this to not be true.  In our tests, domains with the keyword phrase in them and even the exact match domains (except for one circumstance) did not perform better for us than ones that we optimized for keywords that were not included in the domain name.

We wanted to see if analyzing some pretty massive amounts of data would support our observations.  We looked at over 5 million keywords from our IMeye database, and we looked at the top 10 domains in the search engine listings for each.  Here’s what we found:

• only 5% of the keywords had a domain in the top 10 with the keyword phrase in it
• only 5% of the keywords had a domain in the top 10 that was an exact match

Conclusions?  keyword in the domain is not really all that important, as 95% of the time, they don’t even make it into the top 10.  In addition, exact match domains don’t appear to be any “stronger” than simply having the keyword phrase in the domain name.

There is one circumstance that makes it clear in our tests that exact match domains do make a large difference.  We’ve found that with VERY VERY low competition, an exact match domain can rank very quickly.  We’re working on some studies to show that with this data right now.

But, it’s pretty clear to us…that having the keyword phrase in the domain name is really just not that important to SEO efforts.  I’m guessing…it’s all about those backlinks !

It’s the best article I’ve seen and shows how this is likely GOOD for us (marketers)

Check it out here

Certainly things are changing, and this will have some effect, but we need to focus on what it actually does.

In my mind it does two things.  First, it “steers” people towards a certain keyword phrase over others.  This has obvious implications on search volumes.  Some of your targets will get more, others will get less.  Could be good , bad, or indifferent for you.  It has zero impact on who shows up for a given phrase though.  So, my take away is watch your stats and see if certain keyword phrases are falling out of “favor”, then you may have to adjust your SEO towards other phrases.

Example:  I checked one of our ecommerce sites.  We target “widgets” and “widgets for sale ” among others.  As I typed in widgets, my eyes scanned directly to widgets for sale.  Now, this actually ends up being better for us as we rank higher for that.  But…I just need to watch the stats and perhaps move SEO resources form “widgets” to “widgets for sale”

The second thing it will do is expand the “horizons” of searchers.  It may very well increase searches as people go after the initial term they were looking for … as well as others they see presented to them.  This, in general is probably good for us as advertisers (organic or paid).  We may have more chances than before to put our message in front of potential buyers.  Again, I think the key is to watch the stats and see if traffic starting to show up for other terms.  You may need to modify your SEO targets due to this as well.

What’s less clear to me right now is the impact on adwords.  Stand by as we try to unravel that.

Check out this very balanced blog post for some more insight into SEO not being dead!

Let’s just think about it from a common sense perspective.  Although I’m totally oversimplifying, the whole idea of Google is that it shows the most “relevant” or “important” or “most popular” pages that it knows about for a given term. Oversimplifying again, the basic way it does this is to track the number (and quality/type) of inbound links to a page and what that link “calls” the page (anchor text).  So, in general, the more inbound links a page has for a given term, the higher it shows up in the SERPS.  Each inbound link is like a “vote” for the site it’s linking to.

When you comment on a blog (for SEO purposes), most of the time, the “name” field becomes the anchor text of the term you’re trying to rank for , and the link is the page you’re trying to rank for.  Does that really look natural?  Is that really a “vote” ?  Contrast that with a blog post or comment that has the link embedded in it.  THAT looks more like a “vote” … doesn’t it?  Compound that with the fact that Google KNOWS these blog comments are completely abused for SEO, and don’t you think they’re going to do something about that .. if they haven’t already?

We also know that Google already has processes to value the weight or importance of links.  For example, links from higher PR sites are more important; reciprocal links are less important (perhaps even valueless); no follow links are less important (perhaps even valueless); links from known paid link sites are less important etc. So, is it really a stretch to think, that Google is now (or already has) started to seriously devalue links from blog comments.  I certainly don’t think so, and it seems like Google is hinting at just that in the blog post I mentioned.

My personal opinion (and that’s all it is!!) is that links from blog comments that follow the typical pattern of name of commenter = anchor text and link is the page you’re trying to rank are going to or already have been VERY devalued.   I have come to the conclusion that it may very well be a waste of time.  Heck, Google themselves are saying just that!  This is a quote from their blog post about comment links:

At best, a link spammer might spend hours doing spammy linkdrops which would count for little or nothing because Google is pretty good at devaluing these types of links.

So what should you do?  I would (and I’m going to!) start to move away from using blog comments for link building (yikes…a gasp went up in the room).  I just think it’s common sense.  Blog posts with links and links within the body of comments (if you are able to do them!) would still be fair game I’d say, BUT…I think the writing is on the wall here.  I think the party’s over and it’s time to start focusing on other link building techniques.

Please note, I have no “insider” knowledge here and this is only my opinion.

We developed a study using 200 domains and lots of time and effort to answer this question.  Grab it from the direct link below…nothing to sign up for or anything…just sharing!  :-)

Download the report here!

I often come across people who think there’s some magic bullet or secret answer to this…that only gifted gurus and SEO experts know.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The dirty little secret, is that it’s mostly just common sense.

This blog post with 69 link tactics (and yup..there are really 69!) puts all of that in one neat package.  If you’re struggling with trying to figure out where to start or what it’s all about.  Just head on over and check out this post on WIEP.net