Brian Armstrong of UniversityTutor.com talks about how to use domain names to improve Google rankings.

Brian Armstrong of UniversityTutor.com talks about how to use domain names to improve Google rankings.

Read the whole article here. This entry is part 8 of 19 in the series UniversityTutor.com)

The Power Of Having Keywords In Your Domain Name

Iin this lesson, Brian talks about the power of having keywords in your domain (and subdomain) name. When he had multiple sites, he made sure the all had different domain names. He also made sure each site had separate content. He says not to duplicate content in multiple sites. The engines will detect duplicate content.

He recommends using  Google Adwords Keyword Tool to find out what people are searching for.  Doing all this upped his hits, but he was still not seeing all the results he wanted, so he switched tactics and looked at putting keywords in Subdomain names.

Combining his sites into one domain: www.UniversityTutor.com made it easier to manage, but he didn’t want to lose the benefit of having keywords in the domain name(s). He decided to use regional subdomains. Each city that had a tutor program in it was a separate subdomain under UniversityTutor . (He even has it set up so a new subdomain is created automatically each time an tutor comes on board in a new city. His format of  “[SUBJECT] tutor [CITY]” like “algebra tutor austin,”  allows him the possibility of generating over x 1,000 = 40,000 potential keywords to rank for. Wow!)

To keep the ratings from his old, multiple domain system as he transitioned to the new single domain, multiple subdomain one, he used a “301 redirect” to tell Google (and other search engines) when he are moved. Subsequently, he used Rank Checker. (a free Firefox plugin) to check the status.

Thank you Brian for this lesson and the others at your site.