Just a quick post as I wasn’t sure whether or not to mention my observations or not. For those of you who are unaware about what the “Vince Update” is – It’s one of the “many changes” Google made in their algorithm recently, which affected many websites as larger brands seemed to receive a boost in rankings.

I for one noticed this heavily in one of the industries I manage (travel related), every day one of 3 or 4 large brands would be shifted onto the homepage from the second or third page. This changed on a daily basis, giving these larger brands any position between 6 – 9.

Over the last week however it seems that this update has stopped dead. These brands are no longer being boosted to great positions for very highly searched phrases. I debated whether or not to mention this, part of me wants Google to have forgotten to switch the boost button on and the other part of me knows that updates in Google are as regular as minutes in the day.

Just my observations and would love to hear if any other SEO’s have seen the same?

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.