Why keyword domains are so important for SEO

A relevant keyword domain by itself is pretty much useless for SEO. Search engines algorithms pay much more attention to factors like inbound links and page content than the domain name keywords. But having that perfect premium domain can be the ticket to better rankings.

How so? You can use the keywords as your site name. Say for instance I sell online Passport photos and buy PassportPhotos.com. I could name my site “Passport Photos” and legitimately ask that my links contain those keywords.

Granted, a lot of my links would be titled PassportPhotos.com, but I would still pick up some of the former. A keyword domain is the cheapest way to get relevant links in the long run.

How an overloaded server could hurt your Google ranking

There have always been rumours that site speed impacts Google search rank, but now Google has confirmed this myth on its blog:

Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed — that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings. We use a variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites.

While speed only accounts for a small part of overall rank on Google, it’s still very important. Since people don’t like waiting, increasing your site speed by even half a second can drastically increase your traffic and conversions.

It also means that server load makes more of a difference than ever. If your shared host places too many sites on a server or you’re a stingy dedicated server customer, your site’s ranking on Google could suffer. There has never been a better time to optimize or upgrade your server.

Register typo domains to increase site traffic

When it comes to increasing website traffic, many webmasters often look to SEO or banner advertising. Both methods are often very expensive and do not result in permanent gains unless continuously maintained. But if you have a high-traffic website, registering typos of your domain could be a cheap way to bring in more visitors.

According to a recent study, some sites can increase their traffic by 1% simply by registering “wwwdomain.com” to redirect typo-prone visitors “www.domain.com.”

This may not seem like a lot, but even for a site that gets 1,000 visitors per day, this traffic adds up. Take 10 extra visitors per day and multiply by 365, you get 3650. Assume a domain costs $10 and divide that number of 3650, and you’ll realize that you’re paying less than a quarter of a cent ($0.0027) per visitor!

This is significantly less than the cost of PPC ads, which can run up to $1.00 or more per click. Just remember to redirect the typo domain to your site, otherwise you won’t gain any traffic!

Create an XML sitemap for your website

A site map is a single document that links to all other documents within a website. Essentially, it provides an overview of all of the site’s content. Over the years, as website sizes have increased, sitemaps have become instrument in search engine optimization (SEO). Google introduced a tool called Google Sitemaps that allows Web content providers to publish their sitemaps. Other search engines now also support these sitemaps.

The standard format for a sitemap is XML, which lists the data in a format both browsers and other software can interpret. It is also common to provide an HTML version and possibly even a visual representation for human users who actually want to browse the sitemap. Many times it is useful to users if they have trouble finding something on a site or are not even sure what they want to find.

There are many sitemap generators on the market that automate their creation. Some content management systems also have user-created extensions or plugins for sitemap generators. Furthermore, there are some free sitemap generators on the web, such as XML-Sitemaps.com. These typically also include submission instructions so that you can make your sitemap available through Google.

Photo: Wikipedia

Google Caffeine

Webmasters, take note! Google is now in the process of launching Caffeine, a new search algorithm that will introduce some big adjustments. Among them is a new ranking feature that will change which sites get the top ranking.

Google will now put a great deal more emphasis on how often your site is updated, how fast it loads, how much time visitors spend on your site, and more. The new algorithm will also display fewer search results, but work at twice the speed as its predecessor.

What does this mean for webmasters? Once the new update is completely launched, you may very well see a change in your site’s Google ranking, for the good or for the bad. The new search is more keyword-relevant and gives preference to new content. This will no doubt benefit bloggers and hurt owners of static HTML sites.

Photo | flaivoloka

Seo.at nets €12,500 at auction

Three-letter domain Seo.at sold for €12,500 this week at auction. The .at domain suffix is the ccTLD for Austria.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a very profitable niche. Its popularity no doubt was the main reason why the domain sold for so much.

Other recent sales:

npwr.com- $4,000
quizmaker.com- $3,000
enancyagreement.com- £3,500
obese.net- $1,050
buzines.com- €1,000

Source | Domain News

Search Engine Friendly URLs

In a previous post, we learned about dynamic websites. One of the drawbacks of dynamic websites that we did not mention was the incomprehensibly long URLs that often result. The URL to a page might looks something like: yourdomain.com/indep.php?reallylongname&somethingelse&sid003234.

Content management systems like Joomla, provide a solution that works fairly well. Relying on Apache’s mod_rewrite feature, the web server will translate your long URL into something simple that looks like a traditional HTML URL. The SEO theory is that these URLs are friendly to search engines and improve rankings.

Aside from that, a URL that looks like yourdomain.com/somethingelse.html is much more appealing to users, particularly if they want to find that page again and forget to bookmark it. It adds the appearance of permanence to your dynamic pages and will improve your site’s user experience.

Should you pay for search engine submission?

Search engines are the largest source of traffic for most websites, so it’s no surprise that webmasters want to rank as well on them as possible. Before good rankings can be obtained, however, first search portals need to find the site.

The good thing is this usually happens automatically without any need for action on the website owner’s part. Search engines routinely crawl the web looking for new sites to add to their indexes. It’s not unheard of for a new site to be indexed in less than 48 hours. In this day and age, manual submission is obsolete.

Many hosts, however, offer a search engine submission service. Sometimes it’s made available as a free perk for hosting customers, but in most cases, a nominal fee is charged. Features vary from provider to provider, but in general the service submits a URL to several hundred search sites.

Will this boost your site’s traffic? In short, no. While it never hurts for your site to be listed on as many search engines as possible, only three count: Google, Yahoo, and Bing. These are also the sites most likely to find your URL automatically. All other search engines will drive little if any traffic to your site.

HostingCon Begins Monday August 10

HostingCon, which calls itself the “largest gathering of hosted services professionals in the world”, begins next Monday, August 10, in Washington,D.C. It is both a conference and a trade show, showcasing news, ideas, and networking opportunities for web hosting professionals. This is the 5th annual conference, and organizers expect a turnout of around 2,000 people.

Among the keynote speakers this year are: Zane Adam of Microsoft, Antonio Piraino of Tier1 Research, Stephen Cho of Google, Daniel Burton of Salesforce.com, and Emil Sayegh of Mosso. Cloud computing seems to be the hot topic, with many of the keynote speakers focusing on it. Other topics include data protection, SEO, surviving a financial crisis, and virtualization.

Registration is $570 for the full conference with lunch, $415 without lunch, $259 for a single day without lunch, and $71 for exhibits only. Those on a budget can purchase an exhibits only pass and still visit booths, pickup freebies, and network with leading professionals in the industry. There will be over 100 exhibitors this year.

Photo: Flickr

Find out who is linking to your site with Backlink Watch

Backlinks are one of the most important factors that control how much traffic a site receives. They not only refer visitors to your URL, but are also used by search engines to rank websites. It should be no surprise to learn, then, that domains with a high number of backlinks routinely sell for more than their less-networked counterparts.

There are a number of tools out there used to track backlinks. They don’t always give the same number. Some over-count and others under-count. Most simply spit out the number of links found by one or more search engines, usually Yahoo, AltaVista, and/or Bing.
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