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What’s in a name? Choosing your domain
When looking to build a new website, choosing the right domain can make all the difference. Picking something short and catchy can leave you with a real marketing gem. If you can get your hands on good one, it can be extremely easy to brand, easy for people to remember and easy to create a viral following. Just think of how well it worked for Twitter, YouTube, Google and EBay.
Unfortunately, a lot of the single word domains are already in use or purchased by someone looking to make a hefty profit. So unless you have an established brand or business name that will be easy to market online and easy for your consumers to remember, you may want to consider a domain name that has your keywords in it instead.
Keyword Rich Domain Names
Not only do search engines, like Google and Yahoo, give preference to domains with keywords, but so do people when their choosing which link in the results to click on. Both search engines and people searching tend to assume that if the keywords are in the domain name, it must be relevant.
It can also help with off-site search engine optimization. One of the most important factors search engines use in determining which sites rank high for which keywords is incoming links. If your keywords are your domain name, then whether people link to you with anchor text or just your web address, your keywords are still showing up in the link, giving you a nice rankings boost.
If you decide to use a keyword rich domain name, here are a few tips for picking a good one that search engines will like and people will remember.
- Try not to pick anything that’s too long
- It’s best if it’s all one word (no hyphens or dashes)
But if you do separate out your keywords…
- Use only one hyphen at most! Any more than one and you run the risk of being flagged as spam by search engines. It’s also a lot harder to remember and verbally pass on to other people.
- Also, don’t use underscores; they are hard to see and don’t always show_up_if_you_underline_words (which is common practice for links).
Before you get your heart set on a particular domain name or keyword phrase, check out a site like Whois, Web Hosting Search or even Go Daddy and make sure it’s available. These will also let you lookup registration data for them, search by keyword and through previously registered domains that are now available. So good luck and hopefully you’ll find a good one!
