Use Keywords in Your Business Name for Local SEO
Today’s Daily SEO Tip was contributed in part by Gerald Weber.
This is a very simple yet effective SEO tip for local businesses & regional brick and mortar stores, especially if you’re looking to rebrand or start a business from the ground up.
Make sure to make and brand your business name with your main keywords in it if possible. This is important for communicating what your business does along with achieving organic search results (and making sure your incoming links are using relevant anchor text, so when people link to you, they automatically link using relevant keywords).
Remember the days when every business was naming themselves “AAA Mechanics” or “1st American Modeling” to rank highly in the Yellow Pages’ alphabetical order listings? Well those days are long gone! Now it’s time to rank for organic local search results.
For example, if you have a modeling studio in say Florida. You can name the company Florida Modeling Studios. Rather than something like ABC Inc. that has no keywords. (Hopefully you can get a domain with similar keywords as well, which will assist with ranking.)
The advantage of this is you can easily use keywords in your content while referring to your company name. This will enable you to use keywords for on page optimization without sounding ridiculous or unnaturally forcing keywords into your copy.
31 Responses to “Use Keywords in Your Business Name for Local SEO”
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Use Keywords in Your Business Name for Local SEO | Daily SEO Tip” ( http://tinyurl.com/atsp3d )
Reading: “Use Keywords in Your Business Name for Local SEO | Daily SEO Tip” ( http://tinyurl.com/atsp3d )
This is good advice. I recently had a client change their name for this reason. It’s amazing how many new businesses know absolutely nothing about search at the name picking phase though!
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My impression is that having a keyword centric domain names isn’t as valuable for rankings as say 5 years ago.
Seems best to have a short concise domain that fits your company brand name than a keyword stuffed one which generally elongates it and can dilute credibility.
Ready for a debate on this one
,Michael Martin
Google And Blog
Janna Baker Reply:
February 16th, 2009 at 12:57 am
There is a large difference between a keyword friendly domain and a business name. Not all business sites are the name of the business.
For example, if Florida Model School’s domain was fmsmodels.com, people would still link to the site using the company name Florida Model School and the company name would still be in the title tag of the site.
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Loren Baker Reply:
February 16th, 2009 at 1:01 am
Good point Janna, a shorter more memorable domain is better than a keyword stuffed one. I don’t even think that keyword stuffed domains were part of this post
MSN Live Search loves keywords in URL’s however, so there is still some room for SEO’ing domains and page file names.
Marios Alexandrou Reply:
February 16th, 2009 at 1:47 am
Exact match domains still work. My own experiments have convinced me of this. So if you happen to be targeting a keyword where the domain is still available, it’s worth picking up that domain. Put up a microsite or something else useful and a top SERP spot can be yours with relatively little effort.
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Steve Morris Reply:
May 29th, 2009 at 9:56 am
From what I’ve seen it still has a strong part to play in rankings. The rights and wrongs of using keyword stuffed domains as opposed to branding is dependent on Google ranking algo’s.
If Google started ignoring the base domain name we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Ive seen a 9 month old keyword rich domain in number one position with a 10 year old branded domain in number 2 position (it used to be number one)
So by my reckoning having a keyword rich domain is still a good way of gaming the search engines
I’m with you on this one, Michael. If you’re looking for an ongoing relationship with that prospect, then having a memorable brand name and the associated domain, preferably the dotcom version, is IMHO the way to go. With sufficient back links using the right keyword rich link text, you can recover most of the ranking effect you would have had with a keyword rich company name.
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Loren Baker Reply:
February 16th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
What about finding synergy between a nice brand name and service or product descriptive keyterms? Like Senior Money Memos
Or Meineke Car Care Centers, Inc.
Loren,
Hey thanks for implementing my tip into this post. Coolness!
Meh, looks like comment luv is off by a few posts.
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Loren Baker Reply:
February 16th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
YEah, but it’s still spreading the Luv
I’m with Michael too. If it’s not going to be a long domain name, than it’s ok to SEO it.
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Loren Baker Reply:
February 16th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Frank, like I said though, the domain does not always have to reflect the company name 100%.
Take CNN. What does it stand for? Cable News Network.
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=cable+news
Frank Marcel Reply:
February 17th, 2009 at 2:04 am
It seems like we agreed, then
Loren Baker Reply:
February 17th, 2009 at 2:07 am
LOL, yes, I think so
I would say it is vital if you haven’t got the money to build a brand name…
It sure makes getting that all important anchor text into links easier
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If it isn´t a very long domain name, I would say it could probably help, specially when getting links, other sites would link to your company name, that is keyword-rich.
Although, I ve seen things like this: http://www.southfloridamortgagesrefinancingrefinancehomeloans.com/
hmmmm I think that´s overreacting a little bit to this advice
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Loren Baker Reply:
February 16th, 2009 at 1:02 am
LOL … you could not fit that domain on a business card.
Gerald Weber Reply:
February 16th, 2009 at 3:50 am
Boy Loren people really got on a tangent with the domain thing. When the post was about using keywords in your business name and on page optimization. LOL :-p
Gerald Weber’s last incredible blog post..When the Ban Hammer Comes Down on StumbleUpon
Loren Baker Reply:
February 16th, 2009 at 3:52 am
That’s ok, it expands the conversation
Keywords in the Domain name will help in rankings a little bit, but may not work well for highly competitive and generic keywords. And when you use your company name in the title tag, it will help in branding your business name. Not even at the front of the title, you can have it at the end of the title tag which will help users to identify you.
Frank Marcel Reply:
February 17th, 2009 at 2:18 am
I believe it’s just the opposite. Highly competitive and generic keywords in the domain name do help ranking for highly competitive and generic keywords. The point is that choosing a domain name is not only about keywords, it’s about branding too.
Ops.. I didn’t find where are those several ways to use keywords on your site. How come? Do you really meant it? …
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Really the information is provided you is very helpful and thanks for sharing it.
This is very common techniques to use keywords in domain. But this is really important. Because by doing this the chances become high that you website rank better
Good tip use keywords in business name for local seo. Thanks for information about organic local search results.
Great tips. Its very obvious that Regional and International Ranking are demand on their strategic keywords and back links. Where the links came from. Mostly people consider local ranking for their local products. Great info. Thanks
This isn’t the first time I have read about the popularity of location based searches. It seems that people are using search phrases with a location more often.
I think its really important to have keywords in the domain.It definitely has an effect but I think google is changing their ways