Interesting SEO Discovery – Forwarding Domains Can Drive Page One Rankings

Every week I review how all of my sites are ranking in Google and what keywords they are ranking well for. As I’ve said a few times now I’m a huge fan of SEOMoz and I also use Google Webmaster Tools – both are excellent and really must-have SEO tools. When I was reviewing my rankings I saw something I didn’t expect. One of my debt sites (DebtEliminationPrograms.com) was on the first page of Google for the phrase “credit card graphics” even though I didn’t use the phrase on my site. Nobody was linking to me with this phrase as the anchor text either, so how the heck was I ranking well for this term?

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The answer? I am forwarding CreditCardGraphics.com to the site and that, on it’s own, provided for the page one ranking. On average my site is in position 4.8 for the keyword phrase. Now this is not a competitive phrase so it’s certainly an easier one to rank for, more competitive terms would most certainly be harder to rank for, but the point is – forwarding a domain name absolutely helps with SEO and in this case drove a page one ranking.

Ranking well for a specific term just by forwarding one domain name to your site is definitely an incredible advantage to owning an exact-match .COM even if you don’t develop it. Just forwarding the name could provide a nice SEO boost that, when combined with backlinks and on-page optimizations might give you the edge you’re looking for.

I’m not saying that if you want to rank well for any phrase you just buy the exact-match .COM and forward it to your site. What I am saying is that when used with other SEO techniques it does seem pretty darn apparent that just forwarding the domain will give you an SEO bonus. Just another great advantage to having an exact match domain and a potentially interesting SEO use for some of those high search volume longtails that nobody wants to buy…

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton