Archive for September 2011
Picking out a great domain name is critical in the setting up of your online business. Domain names could be made up of the letters A through Z, the numerals 0 through 9 and hyphens. But there is a debate on whether or not to use hyphens, particularly if your domain name is made up of two or more words.
For instance, you have set up a business selling patio furniture. However, you found out that patiofurniture.com is already taken. Would it be a good idea to use a hyphen to make the domain name patio-furniture.com or should you just think of a totally new domain name?
Well, it would still be advisable to come up with a domain name that has no hyphens. However, there are some instances when there are exceptions to this.
Domain names that are hyphenated could be good if you really want specific words to be in your domain name but the combination without the hyphens is unavailable.
Also another situation that using a hyphen could be good is when the words, which you are planning to include in your domain name, would be easier to read with a hyphen. For example, the domain name hotellighting.com would be harder to read compared to hotel-lighting.com. Though the hyphenated domain name is not a completely great domain name, it does make it easier to read.
You could also consider the use of hyphens in domain names for SEO or search engine optimization. There are some who would advise that the use of hyphens actually helps search engines to be able to distinguish keywords better. This would be a good way for those webmasters that have the main goal of optimizing their website for maximum traffic coming from the natural rankings from search engines. The only drawback of this technique is that it might be different eventually, as the search engines are regularly changing the search algorithms that they make use of.
Have You Made This Domain Name Mistake?
When I accidentally evolved into a writing coach for folks on the web, I struggled with creating an identity for myself. I had already built a pretty popular site and brand in one particular niche and people called me by the moniker that I gave myself in that niche. I was stuck for weeks like that. I just didn’t know what to do.
I worked with a coach who recommended that I use my name as my branding position as a writing coach. She thought my last name was memorable and not many people were going to have it on the web. She was right about that. What she didn’t tell me though, was that I wasn’t a celebrity, so people were not going to naturally search for my name yet. They didn’t know me. They were going to find me through other keywords such as “writing” or “article marketing”.
So without that knowledge, I went on to make the same mistake that I had essentially made with my first business as well…So what was my domain name mistake? I did not secure and buy a keyword rich domain name for my main site. I reserved my name.
Even years later when I check my website statistics, most people that find me organically – find me through keywords that I have optimized my site and articles for. Not my name. So that even furthers my proof that I should have reserved a keyword rich domain name rather my first and last name.
Okay, So Why Is This Important?
Through my years of article marketing, I have become somewhat of an SEO expert, and now know just how much importance search engines like Google place on having a keyword rich domain name. In case you are wondering, they place a LOT of importance on it.
What this means is that if I had reserved a name like articlemarketing dot com, my articles would have fared a lot better, and ranked a lot faster, in the search engines.
Now when I write and publish an article to my site, my articles are ranked within 24 hours, but it took a long time to build that type of traffic and importance with the search engines. That didn’t happen right away. I know that if I had had a keyword rich domain name – it probably would have happened a lot faster.
Next time you conduct a search, notice the domain names of the websites that appear in the top results. Sure there are a few whose URLs are completely off topic but they are usually very high traffic authority sites like major newspapers, television, encyclopedia sites, etc. The others are keyword rich (not so famous) sites that could be one of ours!
Last Advice
1 – If you are new to the internet and have not yet built your website/blog, then make sure to secure a keyword rich domain name right away and make that your PRIMARY URL.
2 – If you are already on the web but your website is only a few months old – I’d make the switch to a proper URL.
3 – If you have been on the web for awhile and have a lot of content like me, it wouldn’t make sense to switch your URL now because your content has probably already been crawled and appears in the search engine results. Changing the URLs could mean broken links and a lot of frustration. Trust me – I tried it.
So what you could do is purchase keyword rich domain names that you can use for landing pages, squeeze pages, redirects, sales pages, etc. Having those pages pointing to your main site will help your standing in the search engines, and are almost as good as having a keyword rich primary domain name.
It is not true that all of the good domain names are taken. You may still be able to register your name, your business name, or another catchy URL.
Here are some tips for choosing a domain name:
Keep it short and simple. Long URLs are hard to remember, and people are more likely to make errors when keying them in. Include keywords in your domain name. Search engines may reward you with better placement in search results when the keywords are in your URL. Whenever possible, go for the .com. Many people automatically assume that Web site URLs end in .com, and they do not correctly remember other extensions, such as .net or .info. Try to avoid abbreviations and special characters in your domain name. gdbizcents.com would be very hard to give out without spelling it, and people won’t intuitively remember or guess it. Don’t choose a name that will be easily confused with other domains. For example, if you want to register domainname.com and find it’s taken, domain-name.com is probably not a good choice. People will confuse the two sites. Your own name could be a good domain name, if it doesn’t lend itself to lots of odd spellings. Between Cathy and Kathy, and all the ways people find to misspell Stucker, I figured no one would ever find me. That’s why I came up with IdeaLady.com. And when putting your domain name in writing: If it is multiple words, especially if it’s long, consider capitalizing, such as I did here with IdeaLady.com. Make it easy to read and understand.