Man it has been way too long since my last post. Sorry about that!
It is argued by many as to how much weight Google puts on the domain name, its extension and its keywords. It is also argued as to whether certain domain names can get you in a filter such as the sandbox or supplemental results over another. Like many other factors we do not know the exact information on this however from research we have gathered quite a good understanding of both Google and their methods of rankings sites. So with this info I will attempt to enlighten your understanding of the weight put on the domain name in Google and other search engines.
Whether or not domain names start with a certain amount of weight and whether certain domain extensions receive a higher weight/value than others.

The domain name is a critical part of your website. For one you can’t do much without one. If you didn’t know that you will need to find a dummies guide to the internet - But on a more serious note a domain name can make or break you. Let me explain. Registering a hard to remember domain name can result in losing traffic who might return later. Of course alot of our traffic comes from Google but I happen to have a fairly good repeat-visitors returning to my site. If I had a hard to remember or long domain name I may lose some of those. Having many dashes and underscores and nonsense can also reduce the chances of a visitor returning. This leads me to the part Google is involved in.

A long domain with many underscores or dashes can send a red flag by rocket to Google. I don’t have exact details on how long a domain or how many dashes before it gets flagged. I assume that the more you have the more red flags are raised. Think of it this way. A domain of XX length(assuming xx is a long number) incurs a infraction if you will. By itself this ‘infraction’(please note I am using this word for the sake of this demonstration. I have no proof really that Google uses such a system however my research has led me to believe such) is likely to be to pass over the Google flagger however it may on the other hand still have a small effect. Lets say it also has many dashes and begins to look something like this: 1st-rankings-seo-blog-pagerank-finder-for-google-better-results.com - Obviously too show my point I made it larger than most you would see. Such a domain name could receive ‘infractions’ if you will which added up raise a big red flag which can raise your chances of going through the sandbox without gaining some good quality backlinks. The sandbox I believe is only one of the things these infractions can effect. There may be other things which are effected by these so-called infractions. Again I can’t say for sure such a system exists. It is logical from my research that one does. But again this effect is small generally and is over-ruled by quality backlinks. It is a effect that would only be placed on new sites and would not be seen after the site got some authority. This can be just a few good backlinks.

Now we get to the part this whole article was leading upto. What value or weight is placed on a domain name in Google? Does keyword-stuffing help improve this value? Can it also have a negative effect?

I am going to use a recent ranking I got in Google to prove that domains have value for the keywords in the domain. I believe that domain names are a part of the factoring that Google uses to rank a site. I also believe that trying to cheat the system by keyword-stuffing can have the adverse effect. I believe that each keyword added puts less value on each. I believe this is also true of the title tag. Some of my recent research has led me to believe that adding worthless or excess words can also detract from the domains value for instance: seoguide.com contains the keywords ’seo guide’ and nothing else. This domain will have extra value for ’seo guide’. Because it is a kind of competitive keyword it is highly unlikely the domain in and of-itself is going to get that ranking however it will help. Now the domain name theseoguide.com still contains our keywords and is only 3 words long, is short and targeted yet it contains a worthless word which lessens the value of the rest and so puts less value on our keywords. You get my drift? Each additional word especially unrelated puts less value on the domain. Be careful of this.

Now can a domain rank for its keywords largely because of its domain only?
I believe the answer is yes. A domain can rank for its keywords with little backlinks. This of course depends a lot on the competition for those keywords. Let me give you a example. My site ranks for ‘1st search engine’ which Google says has 150,000,000 sites competing for. Now this figure is quite inflated and it really isn’t that terribly competitive at least not as much as many phrases with that many results. However this ranking is all because of the domain name I chose. Yes I have a search engine and it happens to be named that however that isn’t the page that ranked. It was because of my domain and domain name in my copyright. BTW Google puts weight into copyrights as well. Most people don’t realize it but Google reads that coypright and you generally rank high for your domain name/copyright name.

Again I must make it clear stuffing your domain with keywords can hurt you or at best get you no where.

Now to end this article I will briefly touch on the edu/gov debate. Now I already have a article on this so please read it here: Edu domains and their value
But I will make the note that because Edu/Gov sites are generally good quality sites with alot of authority they tend to give good value. Much better value than .coms. I believe this value is partly based in the extension. A lot of seo aren’t willing to believe this because so many doubt it and because Matt Cutts says it is incorrect. Aaron Wall of Seobook however agrees. He explains in his article Proof Google Loves EDU & GOV sites
Now if Matt Cutts says they are not any different he has a reason which could be that Google sees they are getting spammed and wants to keep it down. Good thinking and hopefully it helps keep the spammers from using edu & gov sites but for some odd reason I highly doubt too terribly many spammers read Matt Cutts blog. I could be wrong….

If you can’t decide which side to believe just stay on the safe side and try to get some edu/gov links. But let me tell you right now spamming them is not the way. It works for some but in the long run you will end up on the worse end of the stick. Treat webmasters with respect.

If you have any question about anything mentioned here please let us know. I highly recommend reading Aaron’s other articles. You won’t find a better resource.

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