Vanity URLS and the Lure of the Keyword Rich Domain Name

Client: “OK, so my main site is doing well.  We’ve got a bunch of links, some age on the domain name, a decent pagerank, and a couple hundred indexed pages.  But the domain name itself doesn’t have our main keyword(s) in it.  And I see a bunch of the highest rank websites have the equivalent of a “vanity URL”… it’s chock full of keywords.  So what do we do?”

SEO: “Well gee, it depends” (aka: The SEO’s Standard Response)

It’s a question that all of us SEO’s have had to answer at one time or another.  And there isn’t a whole lot of agreement across the board (so I invite anyone with expert experience in this department to chime in below in the comments section.)  Until we have a tested answer to the question, I’ll wildly speculate on the best approach.

The Problem:  Let’s re-phrase the question with an example to make sure we are all on the same page:

Let’s say Ying’s Teahouse and Yum Yum is trying to rank for “Columbus Chinese Food.”  And Ying bought www.yingsteahouseandyumyum.com when she started the business 5 years ago and has added a bit of content slowly over the last five years.  The domain is five years old and is getting steady traffic and has picked up some decent links along the way.

But now Ying is thinking that maybe buying www.columbuschinesefood.com will get her higher in the rankings.  And to boot, she also bought up clintonvillechinesefood.com, centralohiochinesefood.com, ohiosbestchinesefood.com, and a handful of other keyword rich domains.  So what do we do now?

My Opinion:  Google’s search algo. is constantly searching for a balance in the importance of keywords in the domain name.  About a year ago, domain name keywords didn’t have a whole lot of importance, but lately there seems to be a good deal more importance placed on the keywords in the domain.  Who knows where it will be in 6 months?

To answer this question, I think we need to consider a few things first.

1. Just because the best positions in Google’s search results *seem* to favor what we’ll call “Vanity URL’s” doesn’t mean that the URL itself is giving that site the ranking power.  I would propose that most of the people who are buying up keyword-rich domain names and developing them are either in the SEO field or know a bit about it.  With this in mind, they are likely doing most all of the Other SEO Stuff well too.  That’s why their sites are coming up at the top.  It sort of like that old adage about Volvo’s being the safest car on the road.  Maybe Volvo’s are pretty darn safe cars, but I think it’s also safe to say that most Volvo drivers aren’t tearing down the road with Cheap Trick blasting out the windows.  OK, that metaphor is kind-of a stretch, bit I hope you see my point.
2. Old, big sites do better overall.  If Ying keeps her old domain with links in place, she is going to be able to rank pretty well for a whole bunch of different keywords.  She could spread her pagerank power across “Clintonville Chinese Food”, “Columbus Chinese Food”, “Central Ohio Chinese Food”, etc. with pretty good success.  www.ColumbusChineseFood.com might rank Ying well for the search “Columbus Chinese Food”, but would Ying really want to build a whole site just to rank for that one keyword?  Is the ROI positive for that?  And, what if Ying has 20 different domain names?  Does she want to build 20 different sites for 20 different domain names just to be hopefully ranked highly for those twenty searches?

In short- my experience says to spend your web development budget making the older, larger site better than to start new sites to tackle “ultra-niche searches”.  For our example above, I’d suggest to Ying that she get a bunch more links to her site, maybe start a blog, and then build pages on her old domain that are specifically SEO’d for Clintonville Chinese Food, Columbus Chinese Food, etc.

Because although Ying’s older site might be number 2 or 3 for “Clintonville Chinese Food”, her old site may very well have the strength to be #2 or #3 for 1900 unique searches (as well as #1 for about 500 of those).  And ColumbusChineseFood.com may rank #1 for “Columbus Chinese Food”, but it isn’t even in the top 100 for the 1900 other searches that Ying’s older site is ranking for.

And if Ying continues to invest her budget into making her older site better, then in 6 monthes when she wants to expand into new keywords Ying only has to make a new page on her already well-established site… not create a whole new website.

So unless the niche you build sites in is lucrative enough to justify it, why build out a whole site just for one keyword?  And then what happens when Google changes their rankings and your small sites drop off the search map?

Alright… I’ve said my piece enough… who else wants to chime in?  Let’s have all sides and angles, and if you have some examples then by all means, Let’s hear em!

Thanks, Brad

photo credit: msmail