Monday, August 24, 2009

Domain Name Picking Made Easy

By Ron Nelson

A good domain name is crucial to ensure the success of a website online. An interesting domain name will spark curiosity and compels the web surfers to click through to check it out. It's not necessary to pump all your creativity into making a domain name, that does not necessarily make it any better. What is the reason behind this? You have to check whether the domain name is good for the search engines, because they pick certain keywords to index the domain names, and hence the websites. Make your keyword sound compelling and make it oriented for the search engines too. So keep on reading-the guidelines are included in this article.

Your first task is to pick the right keyword. There are plenty of tools available to help you with this, both free and paid. Your goal is to select the keyword that fits the subject of your site, has enough search volume and also has low competition. Remember that the less competing sites there are, the easier it will be for you to rank for the keyword.

Once you have selected your desired keyword for the domain name, you have check a domain name service for its availability. Should the exact name be unavailable, you will be given some alternatives. It is always good to go for the .com type domain names, but if these cannot be obtained, you could also consider different extensions.

Just putting in some filler words or numbers will allow you to retain your keyword. One ruse is to put the words 'a', 'an' or 'the' as fillers. You get a good domain name, and you also get it indexed because the search engines will simply ignore such buffer words. Also consider using numbers such as 77 at the end of the phrase.

Now let us see what to do if you don't get the .com ending. In some cases, an extension does not matter much, especially if the keyword is immensely popular. Some popular examples are .org, .net and even .biz. 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!

You don't need to know rocket science in order to design a domain name that's suited for the search engine purposes as well as for the users. Only 10% of the success of your domain name depends on your intelligence. If nothing else helps you, the extensions surely will.

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