by pgloor
3 replies
  • SEO
  • |
Hello,

I'm new to Affiliate Marketing and as such I wanted to create a blog where I document my journey. It will have something like "Peters Affiliate Marketing blog" in its title.

The root domain is a dot com domain named after my full-name. As it will be the only content under my domain name I'm free to form its url in any way I want. I can even use a sub domain.

The question is what is best practice from both, the users and the SEO point of view. Is it better to have related keywords in the domain name, in the url after the domain name, mixed in both parts of the url or none at all?

From my former business I know that keywords in the url worked quite well (that was three years ago), but is this still the case after the recent changes on Google?

When I think about Penguin and if I've got it right, then there is a problem with exact match keywords in the anchor text. Doesn't that mean that most of the inbound links automatically get banged down?

From this point of view it would be best not to include any keyword in the url at all. What is your suggestion and why?
#blog #blog advice #keywords #url
  • Profile picture of the author scottmacair
    Originally Posted by pgloor View Post

    When I think about Penguin and if I've got it right, then there is a problem with exact match keywords in the anchor text. Doesn't that mean that most of the inbound links automatically get banged down?

    From this point of view it would be best not to include any keyword in the url at all. What is your suggestion and why?
    If the keywords in the anchor text of links match the domain or brand exactly then this is ok as it appears natural i.e. naturally people link to a site using the site's name / brand.

    Problems arise when you have too high a ratio of anchor text pointing to a page where the anchor text is not the domain or brand.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6365023].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Carlton Johnson
    Your thinking about this a bit wrong in my opinion. If the keywords are what the page/domain is about they they should be there. From a user perspective that would be the best thing. Always ask yourself, would this make sense for my user if I took, doing things for google totally out the picture.

    The main problems with the linking happen when the footprint is not natural which means it is to keyword anchor text focused, which in a real World wouldn't neccessarily happen. However, if the domain name or page name is a keyword anyway, then it is more natural if the keywords appear in the anchor text.

    However, keep your users in mind and when you do your link building just vary it up and make sure that a number of broad terms are in your anchor text as well. Think natural. Keywords are still fine in URL's, in fact I would say it would be strange for them not to be there.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6366531].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author pgloor
      Thank you for your replies. I see, I had some misleading information. On the other hand I should consider to choose another domain name for my blog instead of my fullname.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6366671].message }}

Trending Topics