MarkBeljaars.com

We all know how essential it is for your site to rank on the first page for your chosen keywords. This is why SEO plays such an important role in all web based commercial and social endeavors. In July 2008, Google announced that it had indexed over 1 trillion web pages each of which is a potential competitor. Most ranking algorithms currently determine the order in which sites are displayed for a given search term by taking into consideration relevance and authority. Search engines determine relevance by reviewing your site’s content. A search engine would quickly go out of favor if you search for baby food and are returned a list of sites describing Russian coins. Authority is generated through off page techniques typically including backlinks from other sites containing the same keywords (AKA authoritive or quality backlinks).

Making sure your domain name includes relevant keywords is a form of SEO keyword optimization. Keywords in the domain name however have a much higher weighting than keywords in the content. I have personally conducted an experiment to rank a keyword optimized domain and a non keyword optimized domain using the same techniques in both cases. Even after obtaining double the number of quality backlinks , the non-optimized domain did not usurp the optimized domain. The conclusion: keyword optimized domains are an extremely important SEO technique.

There are 184 million domain names currently registered and approximately 100,000 new domains registered every day! With these statistics you can be sure that most competitive and relevant domain names will have already have taken. Short of purchasing a domain name for a domain name hoarder (I don’t like those guys), there are a couple of techniques you can use to ensure your domain name remains SEO relevant.

1. Localize Your Website

If you are targeting a local audience, consider obtaining a localized domain name. For example, if you are selling to Australians only, try to purchase a .com.au keyword relevant domain instead of a .com domain. This has an added benefit as most search engines will rank localized sites higher as local sites are typically more relevant. A google search for fishing rods in the US and the same search for fishing rods in Australia highlights this point.

2. Add a Prefix or Suffix

Adding a prefix or suffix to the keywords is a common technique for obtaining a keyword relevant domain. For example, if you are targeting baby food, domain names such as mybabyfood.com and babyfoodco .com are still highly relevant. Be careful not to add too many letters though as relevance will diminish with each character is added.

3. Add a Dash Between Your Keywords

Use this technique sparingly. Too many dashes may make your site appear to be spammy in the eyes of potential customers. Do not use this technique if you are targeting repeat visitors. Repeat visitors will often forget to enter the dash into the domain name and accidentally find themselves on your competitors web site. Dashes appear to most search engines as a space and can therefore be used to separate keywords. Say for example you have a site promoting a business specializing in engraving words on keys (such as “front door”). The keywordshop.com domain name may appear to a search engine to be relevant for “keywords” and “hop”. key-words-shop.com may produce a better result.

4. .net or .org Extensions

There is no evidence that search engines give priority to .com extensions. Traditionally .org extensions were used by not-for-profit organisations and many potential visitors may still think this is the case. As with dashes, repeat visitors may automatically add .com to your domain and accidentally navigating to your competitors site.

5. Keyword Optimized Path

Lastly, you may consider adding a keyword optimized path to your existing non-optimized domain. For example, www.thefoodcompany.com/babyfood will rank for baby food. If the example site only sells baby food, a permanent redirection from the home page to the babyfood page will also help in the keyword rankings. As explained in item 2, additional characters in the domain name will however reduce the keyword relevance of the domain name.

Domainsbot.com is a free service that can be used to help find that killer domain name. Just enter your keywords into the text box and Domainsbot will produce a list of SEO optimized domain names. The results are sometimes unexpected or event funny but often serve as a good starting point.

To conclude, if you are serious about SEO make sure your domain name is keyword optimized.

Just a quick note to let you know that I have released my latest plugin called iRobots.txt SEO.

iRobots.txt SEO is a SEO optimized, secure and customizable robots.txt virtual file creator.

Full details of the plugin can be found at http://markbeljaars.com/plugins/irobotstxt-seo/.

This plugin started life as a selfish need to easily create out-of-the-box SEO optimized robots.txt files for my websites. Since the initial conception, I’ve added features to inhibit specific bots and create customized records. No other robots.txt plugin delivers this level of flexibility.

I’ve also spent a lot of time developing a standardized settings interface. The setting page looks like a standard Wordpress Edit New Post page with expandable and retractable sections. Comments on the interface would be appreciated as I am planning on retrofitting Table of Contents Creator with this new style.

Anyway, I’ve blabbered enough. Please give the plug-in a try and let me know what you think.

There are many Wordpress plugins that are nice to have, but very few are essential. This is where Pretty Link is different. If you are serious about tracking the performance of your adds, internal and external links or even downloads then Pretty Link is definitely worth looking at. According to the author, Pretty Link can…

Shrink, track and share any URL on the Internet from your WordPress website

…and what’s more, the shortened URL is prefixed with your website’s domain name. This blows tinyurl.com and bit.ly out of the water and has obvious SEO benefits to boot. Pretty Link was originally borne from the need to neaten up those ugly affiliate links that often scare off would-be purchasers. With Pretty Link, you can make a URL that looks like this http://www.shareasale.com/m-pr.cfm?merchantID=16526&userID=363159&productID=466062304 into one that looks like this http://beginnerchess.org/chesshouse-22.

Once a link has been “prettisized” (I’m sure this is not a real word), it can also be tracked as per the screenshot below. This allows you to tell how often your links are clicked and which links work better at attracting potential buyers than others. This is an extremely powerful tool for all Internet marketers. What’s more, Pretty Links with different names can point to the same actual link. This is useful for example if you want to track whether people are clicking on your left side banner add or the link in your article. With this sort of tracking information you can determine which add copy attracts the clicks and which products people are generally interested it. You can then adjust the add copy that doesn’t work and rotate out the products that nobody wants.

Pretty Link couldn’t be simpler to use. Once installed and activated, expand the Pretty Link Settings group and select Add New. Put the messy URL in the Target URL section and a nice human readable slug (a tag that contains no spaces, but can contain a dash) in the Pretty Link text box. If your messy URL contains a question mark (a ? denotes the start of URL parameters) then you must ensure that you select the Standard Parameter Forwarding radio selection in the Link Options section. To use the new Pretty Link, you simply use the Pretty Link instead of the original link. For example, if you click on either of the two affiliate links given in the introduction you will notice that both take you to the same destination.

Another great feature of Pretty Link is that it allows you to update the target URL without modify the Pretty Link slug. This is useful if you want to modify your affiliate link without updating your article or add copy. This may be the case if you have found a cheaper or better product for example.

Pretty Link’s SEO benefits include an option to nofollow your Pretty Link which is useful if the linked URL is not optimized for your keyword. Another benefit is that you can chose the name of your Pretty Link slug, allowing you to add more keywords to your page in the form of links.