How to get on Page 1 of Google - The Benefits of Exact Match Domain Names

In my last post I advised to choose your domain name carefully, stating "unless you have a well-known brand ... it is highly advantageous to purchase a domain name that contains keywords people are searching for". Today, I'll show you how to take that one stage further to virtually guarantee a page 1 (top 10) spot in Google.

I should probably start by saying that this technique is likely best used as a 'complimentary' method. By that I mean you might want to buy a domain that works well for your business (either containing your brand name or keywords your customers will use in a search) as well as additional domains that will help you obtain that, often illusive, page 1 spot.

So here it is, and it is really simple...

Buy an exact match domain name!!!

Whoa there, hold on just a minute. Before you go rushing off to buy that domain, some clarification is required if this is to work...

Firstly an explanation of what is meant by 'exact match'. Google uses three terms to classify search phrases. These are:

• Broad Match. This means that the results will essentially match the words that you're searching for, but there may be some use of plurals, synonyms and misspellings (i.e. variants of your search words).
  
  
• Phrase Match. This means that the words you type will appear together (consecutively) as a phrase. An example would be "hiring an online business consultant". A search for that would ensure all search results contained that exact phrase. To try this for yourself in Google, make sure the phrase appears in quotation marks - this is how you tell Google that you want a phrase match.
  
  
• Exact Match. Really just used by Google AdWords to say that you only want to display your advert when an exact phrase is used in isolation. For example, if I specified that I wanted my advert to appear when the exact phrase "online business consultant" was searched for, it would not display if someone searched for "hiring an online business consultant" (because it contains additional words). Note that if I specified 'phrase match' then it would display.

Now we know what an 'exact match' is, you need to make sure you buy the right domain. The current wisdom is that this will only work for .com .net and .org domains - Google seems to give priority to these.

So there you have it. If you want a top 10 spot in the Google search results, buy an exact match domain name on .com .net or .org (don't waste your time or money on the others).

Final thoughts...

A couple of SEO techniques will improve your chances significantly. Be sure to include your exact phrase in the TITLE and H1 tags. Learn about HTML entities (markup and tags) here.

An update on There's No Smoke Without Fire...

I'm using the above technique myself to see just how well it can work - in all honesty, it's not something I've tried before. This post was written on 1st July 2009, the same day I first uploaded the index.html file to my exact match domain. I will post back here when is is indexed by Google, and will also let you know where it appears in the search results. This update will appear below...

*** Results of the 'exact match' domain name experiment ***

2nd July 2009: Blimey, that was quick. Last night, just 12 hours after uploading the home page, it was indexed by Google. Better still, it ranks number 8 for the exact phrase - firmly on page 1 of the search results. On that basis, I would have to declare the experiment a success. There are however, a couple of caveats (apologies, I'm going to get a little jargony):

• This technique might not be as effective if there is good quality competition. By good quality I mean well-established sites with lots of inbound links and a decent page rank.
  
  
• I don't think it will work if you set up a DNS redirect. The .com and .net domains are owned by someone else (my client bought .org), but these do not appear on page 1 for the exact match search. I believe this is because there seems to be a DNS redirect to their main site (perhaps meaning that Google doesn't have a page to put in their index). One way round this might be to use a Javascript redirect - the type of thing that says 'you will automatically be redirected to the new page in 10 seconds'. Alternatively, try and make the exact match domain pages contain something useful - my client's encourages visitors to sign up to the mailing list in return for a discount code.

You can't really control when Google will index you pages, but there are things that you can do to encourage it. For the sake of being helpful, what I did is listed below. Everything is designed to let Google know you're there to be found.

• Installed Google Analytics
• Verified the site in Google Webmaster Tools and uploaded a sitemap
• Wrote this article containing a link to the site (and used pingoat to get it noticed)
  
• Submitted the URL to Google and Bing (MSN)

So there you have it, if you want to easily make it to page 1 in Google, get yourself an exact match domain name.