I have been submitting articles to some of the article directories and getting some good links back to my site from them but a number of the sites do not allow me to use HTML in the resource box and so I am not getting my keywords in my anchor text. If my domain name contains a keyword does this count as an anchor text keyword? For example if I were after the keywords red paper plane and my domain name was blue-paper-ideas.com does the word paper count as an anchor text link?
I don't think it would have as much effect if the keyword/phrase you after was blue paper ideas, you want to target a single keyword so in the case you described it would not have as much of an effect since there are multiple keywords embedded in the URL of the website. If you would have a single keyword in a domain then is being searched for in the SE's it would give a better impact. This also counts for multiple keywords but in my oppinion only when these multiple keywords are being used for a search and not only one of them.
google and most of the other search engines place weight on the individual words within a phrase. so if the single word of 'paper' was used as anchor text, it would seriously impact on a search for blue paper. You see 'paper' is the main word here, with 'blue' being a qualifier. The search engines also know and understand many words through their lexicon. Another example is wedding gowns. Wedding' is the word, 'gowns ' the qualifier. so in this case more weight is placed on pages about weddings than gowns. with pages about both 'wedding' & 'gowns' getting the best shot.
thank you for the relies, the question was realy do the search engines treat the words included in the domain name the same way they treat the words in the anchor text? So would having a domain called blue-paper-ideas.com have the same effect on ranking as having anchor text that says "visit us at blue paper ideas"?
I don't know if Google would consider the name of your domain as a normal anchor text, anyway it is known that the keywords in your URL are very important (like the title), so having this domain name would be more effective than just an anchor text with "visit us at blue paper ideas". Besides, you may do both (I mean having this domain and linking it with this anchor on directories who accept it, and without anchor on those who do not).
Yes! Keywords in domain names do work. I have tested this theory myself and noticed that using keywords in my domains seem to have a positive affect on Google and other search engines. Using a domain with keywords for your article submission lines help.
But you have to ask yourself if it is the fact the URL has a keyword in it, or the fact that to link to the page using your URL automatically gives you the correct anchor text. We have to be careful not to confuse cause and effect in SEO.