Friday, August 29, 2008

Effective SEO Starts With Choosing The Right Domain Name

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.

Your first objective is to find a search engine optimized keyword that you can use in your domain name. Use a keyword analyzer to get this done. 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 keyword analyzer will give you many different versions for the single keyword you used. Choose those keywords from this list that describe more about what your website is about. A rule of search engine optimization is to use low competition keywords because they increase your chances of getting found. 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.

Most people use 'a', 'an' and 'the' for such filtering purposes in their domain names. Search engines will overlook such words. Therefore, your domain name gets optimized and also remains better in the visitors' memories. Use numbers at the end of the phrase. Any number like 80 or anything else will do. If you get everything but the .com, this is what you must do.

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.

Conclusion

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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