If you've spent any time looking at the results you get back from a Google search, you'll probably have noticed that the domain names of the sites that rank highly almost always have one or more of the search keywords in them. Time to abolish some old practices so you can now do this too!

Buying keyword-rich domains and just redirecting them is so last decade...

Traditionally, boosting search engine rankings for a particular keyword or keyphrase could be done by buying one or more keyword-rich domain names and setting them up as Permanent Redirects (also known as 301 redirects) to the main website. Google and the rest of the search engines have seen through this one and as a technique on its own this method doesn't hold water any more.

If you're a holder of many such domains you'll probably find they're not in Google's main index and thus not doing you a lot of good from a search engine rankings point of view. Google has done this because there's very little real-life benefit to an internet user in clicking through a redirected domain name - the target site is where they end up so as far as the search engines are concerned the keyword-rich domain they went to in the first place is basically useless.

...but dedicated micro-sites can make them useful again

Lets say you have a company with a small number of 'primary areas' for which you are the leader in your market sector. You could place all your information on one website and this is recommended if you're a new company as it'll make website maintenance simpler. If, however, you've been in business a while and can buy some new (or already have some) domain names containing the keywords you'd like to be found for, you can use these to better reflect your primary areas of business on the internet.

Create a micro-site on each domain name, with a small number of pages, entirely dedicated to a given primary area of your company. Link back to your main website for anything unrelated to the primary area you're catering for (general company information; other services; etc.) and keep the user on the micro-site for everything to do with this primary area. Make sure, of course, that anything related to this primary area is moved from the main website to the micro-site and appropriate links are created so users who reach your main site first get to the micro-site easily too.

This is, of course, a bigger maintenance job but the results can be worth it.

If your keyword-rich domain name did end up out of the Google index, file a reconsideration request explaining you've now created an appropriate dedicated micro-site and you'll get back in. As always with optimising search engine rankings, slow but sure is the way and don't expect results overnight!

Ben.

This article is an abridged version of It's a feeding frenzy for keyword-rich domains, from the SEOmoz blog which provides SEO advice for those in the field but can be terse reading for a non-specialist. Hopefully the above overview provides a suitable plain English summary of the key concepts.

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