Choosing a SEO/SEM friendly domain name…

NOTE: SEO is the acronym for: ’search engine optimisation. Which is the process of making your web pages more search engine ‘friendly’ by optimising the code and content.

Choosing the correct domain name for your site generally has a big impact in terms of how it affects your positions in the search engines and your overall traffic.

THERE ARE 3 CRITICAL FACTORS, YOUR DOMAIN NAME…

  • … should contain key words.
  • … should be as short as possible – easy to remember & easy to type in.
  • … can be better off as a .com over say a .net, org etc …
  • … consider localisation of the domain… i.e. if you want it to do well in the UK .co.uk etc etc…

1. KEY WORDS IN YOUR DOMAIN NAME

Search engines closely guard the secrets of their algorithms that are used determine who ranks higher.

I have learnt and discovered a lot over the years… one thing I have noticed is that keywords in a domain name can/do have a lot of influence as far as the search engines are concerned. However, MSN seems gives it more weight than the other 2 major search engines: Google and Yahoo!

The key is that your SEO (search engine optimization) work should START BEFORE you even register your domain name and choose a domain that contains at least one good (relevant) keyword for your requirements.

2. SHORT DOMAIN NAMES ARE EASY TO REMEMBER

This one is obvious …

www.superfantasticwebsiteforsomething.com

… I wouldn’t remember that so many other people wouldn’t either! Something like ‘www.supersite.com’ is much better.

3. WHY ARE .COM DOMAINS BETTER?

This has less to do with search engines and more that most people will type in ‘.com’ before .net or anything else.

For that reason alone, try to register a .com before anything else.

4. LOCALISATION

It has been suggested that having domain names localy to the country your interested in can have an effect. I am trying to experiment with this and will report via a new post or update this one.

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