Archive for the 'Domains' Category

Tips On Choosing An SEO Effective Domain Name

Monday, July 7th, 2008
by Bruce Hoover

Domain names are as important to websites as attractive covers are to books. An interesting domain name never fails to attract web surfers to click through and check out. If you think that putting all your innovativeness into the domain name will make it better, you are mistaken. Why does this happen? The answer lies in the keyword. If your domain name is innovative but not search engine optimized with keywords, the search engines will not be able to index it. In other words, your domain name must be appealing as well as crafted for the search engines. Read this article to understand how both these can be achieved.

Start by researching for a search engine optimized keyword that can be a part of your domain name. A keyword analyzer is the tool that can help you do this. You will able to find such tools by searching on popular Internet engines. Think of a sample keyword that tells about what your site is and enter it into the tool. The analyzer tool will display several options for this sample keyword. Choose those keywords from this list that describe more about what your website is about. You’re site is better search engine optimized if you use a long tail keyword because there will be fewer webmasters who will choose them. Now, you can begin thinking about your real domain name.

The company that provides domain names will let you know if a particular domain name is available. The domain name service will also suggest alternatives if the one you put in is not available. Put in your keyword first - this way you can better use this tool. You will get other recommendations if this particular keyword is not available to use as the domain name. You must definitely consider any suggestion that has the main keyword and a .com suffix. You will have to use your creative mind to think of options if this is not present. By putting in filler words in the domain name, you may be able to find an available option that still keeps your keyword.

You can use ‘a’, ‘an’ and ‘the’ as fillers. These words are not considered by the search engines. So, they will index your site and you will have a very appealing domain name too. This is achievable even if you use some numbers like 45 or anything you prefer at the end of the phrase. There are some ideas to use if you get everything else but not the .com ending too. Read on.

You may opt for an extension other than .com, especially in the cause of very popular keywords. Other workable solutions are .biz, .net and .org. One more tactic is to use country or state specific extensions. This works if international or local marketing makes no difference to you. You can well understand that it is much wiser to be on the first page in the Indian Google than to be on the 86th page in the American Google! It is not complicated to have a domain name that serves well for your visitors as well as for the search engines.

Summary

Only 10% of the success of your domain name depends on your intelligence. The rest depends on the keyword analyzer tool. The last straw, when nothing else works, is to resort to the extensions.

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