It is suggested to use the keyword in your domain name, the H1 tag, the title tag, etc. for on-site SEO. That way, search engines get a clear picture of what your site is about.

One big off-site SEO factor, of course, is backlinks. A highly valuable backlink is one that uses the anchor text of the keyword that you are targeting. Also, if the backlink is one-way and do-follow, it is much more valuable.

Today I launched a niche website directory that is hosted here on this blog. It covers a broad range of categories. I will be manually approving all submissions and won’t allow any junk to come through.

I’m only going to allow a keyword to be used just one time in the directory. In other words, if you and a competitor are targeting the exact same keyword/keyphrase, the listing will be given to the first one to submit their site.

You can submit as many sites as you like, but you cannot submit the same site more than once trying to target more than one keyword. Pick your best one and go with that. Feel free to submit an internal page of your site, but I am only going to accept one site submission per domain. Check it out.

More info: What Keyword Are You Targeting? Want Some Help?

Keywords In The Domain

Of course we know it is advantageous to purchase a domain name with our keyword in it. You can get one with or without hyphens. In other words: yourkeyword.com or your-keyword.com.

Country Specific TLD

When setting out to a create a niche blog for a certain keyword you should take a step or two back. What country are you targeting? And before you say… “all of them”, you should consider getting a bit more niche specific than that for better results. When doing your keyword research to find high trafficked keywords with low strength of competition, preferably using Market Samurai, you can look at country specific results.

Because people search for things in search engines differently, you will see different results for “number of searches” and “competition” when looking at the results for a particular country. Now if you buy a domain name with that particular country’s TLD, and host the site on a server that resides in that country (more on that later), then you will be several steps ahead of your SEO competitors right out of the gate.

By the way, TLD stands for top level domain and is the part after the “dot” in the domain name (or maybe it even includes the dot, I’m not sure). (com, ca, edu, for example)

Check out this list of country specific TLD’s from Wikipedia.

2 Years Minimum

Also, the testing has been done, and the search engines will take your site more seriously, and rank you higher than competitors as a result, if you pay for 2+ years when buying your domain name. Don’t just get it for 1 year. Invest in your business and get it for 2 or more.

Extra SEO Tips

In an effort to rank higher for your chosen country-specific keyword in the country-specific search engine, it is beneficial to host the site on a server that is located in the country that you are targeting. Sometimes it’s tricky to find because just because the homepage of a hosting provider is in Australia for example, it does not mean that the servers are there. I will be putting together a list shortly with servers and hosting providers around the world and will include it in a future post.

Additionally, entering a street address from the country that you are targeting onto your site will help you rank higher. I think it helps when on the About, Contact and Privacy Policy (and maybe Terms & Conditions) pages. I generally just include it in the footer (which is especially simple on a WordPress blog by adding it to the footer theme file) so it appears on all pages.

Buying Domain Names

GoDaddy still continues to provide great prices for domain names. They add new TLD’s to their offerings all of the time. I buy domains from several domain registrars for a specific strategy that I employ, but for the most part GoDaddy is my choice for domains.

As a bonus, domains purchased at GoDaddy will get propagated quicker, meaning your site will be viewable around the world quicker, but it does depend on the TLD. For example, a .com purchased at GoDaddy could have a site “live” for the world to see in literally minutes. I know because I’ve done it. Try these coupons for some discounts. (cjctld749 for .org AND MTECH330 for .com) Using these coupons will negate my referral commission unfortunately so you don’t really have to use them! haha Oh, and if you are purchasing more than one domain with different TLD’s and using coupons, do the transactions separately because you can only add 1 coupon at a time.

More info: Advanced Domain Name Basics