What’s in a name? Maybe top search engine position on Google if you choose wisely.

Google uses several factors to determine where your web pages will show up in its search results. Some of those are “on page”—meaning they appear on the page itself—and some of those are “off page”—meaning they appear on other web pages that link to yours.

One of the key items Google looks at when determining how high to rank a page on your website for a search phrase is the text other pages use when linking to that page.

For example:

As I write this there is a uproar going on about the religion Scientology. Today when you Google “dangerous cult” the Scientology website comes up first.

Now Scientology doesn’t call itself a “dangerous cult” and that phrase never appears on the page itself. Instead many web pages (mainly on blogs) linked to the Scientology main page using the text “dangerous cult” in the anchor (that’s the blue underlined part of the link.) As a result Google then decided the Scientology main page must be a good resource for people searching for “dangerous cult.”

But what does this have to do with your domain name? Plenty. Here’s why:

When most people link to your main page they will do it using your domain name. Your domain name then will be used by Google to help decide what the page is about.

So if you if you want to score highly for “Vacations in Greece” it makes sense to use a domain name containing those words—and if possible in that order. (By the way…I just checked and “vacationsingreece.com” is not available, but “yourvacationsingreece.com” is.)

As you receive more and more incoming links, more and more people will be linking to you using your domain name—and if you have chosen wisely you can score highly for that phrase.

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The name tag above is taken from here and is a hilarious parody from The Princess Bride.

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This post is taken from Aaron’s new book:

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