Choosing the right domain name can help link building

It’s kind of obvious that having a targeted keyword in your domain name is going to help you in some respects in terms of rankings. However there are other indirect benefits of choosing a domain name with keywords included in them.

Natural links

These natural/organic/golden/mythical links which are generated over a long period of time are the ones Matt Cutt’s and Google say will bring the most value to any website. It just so happens I agree with them (lucky Google), however if you run a small to medium sized website they are often few and far between. Ideally you would hope that the anchor text given out of generosity would contain your desired keywords, however if your company/domain name does not contain any keywords then the likelihood of this happening is very small. If your domain name is keyword driven then guess what – you’ll probably get a bunch of desired anchor text links naturally.

Directory listings

Now it’s fairly easy to get into most directories, except a few high value ones which have certain criteria’s for listings. One such common listing must is that your website anchor text be your website or company name. Bad news for the majority of websites out there as you are probably losing a little bit of value by having your brand name as your anchor text. However if you have desired keywords in your website name then your anchor text is much more appropriate to the phrases you’re trying to target. Of course directory owners have the right to refuse your listing, but the majority which come with a sign up or review fee will gladly accept such a method.

Blog Links

As many of you will know or should do, the most common referrals in a blog posts are:

• Joe blogs at Website name

• Source: Website name

• Website Name

These phrases are generally used the most by bloggers (not necessarily SEO bloggers) to describe a finding online or to point to a recommended resource. So it really does pay to have keywords in your domain name as the amount of targeted natural links you will acquire will be much larger than if your domain/company name has no keywords associated with them.

I was lucky enough to get a seat at London’s 2008 WidgetWebExpo chaired by Ivan pope. The event was held in “sunny” London and there were a range of speakers; Chris Thorpe (MySpace), Eyal Magen (Gigya) and Paul Smith (Umee) to name a few.

Of course I attended to explore the possibilities of widgets and SEO but found myself with a wealth of widget knowledge instead. Some really interesting facts and figures which may surprise a lot of you, but here’s a summary of some data:

•    The number 1 widget in the world (installs) = YouTube
•    The number 1 MySpace comment = “Thanks for the add”
•    Facebook “gifts” application made $30 million last year alone
•    The average widget only lasts 200 page views
•    Every human can only hold 150 meaningful relationships at once, the rest are lightweight
•    Each widget has a maximum lifespan of 6 weeks
•    For every widget install you should expect a maximum of 50 unique visitors

I also copied down some internal Gigya data to show the most common uses for widgets:

Anyway, I learned a lot more than what was written down on this post, but of course you have to hold back something for yourself! Thanks to all the guys that took part and I look forward to the next one!