Thursday, July 30, 2009

Choosing A Domain Name And Its Effect On SEO

By Sandee Sascho

When it comes to selecting the best domain name for a new website, it is not as simple as just choosing a name that you like or your company name, although choosing a catchy name can be good for branding. The domain name itself, along with any page names within the site, can all help or hinder how easily your site will be found by the search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. There are several factors to consider when first contemplating a new domain name.

Your first priority in choosing a domain name is to carefully select the word that comprise your domain name. If you are offering a service or good, try to choose a domain name that includes at least a portion of that service or good in the title. For instance, if you run a website that sells shoes, your domain name might be "shoeoutlet", or "your-shoe-store.com". It should be easily remembered and pertinent to your business.

From a search engine optimization perspective it is best to choose a name that contains your most significant keywords or keyword phrase. This is one of the factors that can help your site to be search engine friendly and therefore, along with other factors, be more easily found and gain higher rankings in the search engines.

How the heck am I supposed to know what keyword to use?

There are several tools available freely online that can help you to establish the best ones to choose from, my personal favorite is the Google keyword tool. To find this simply type, 'Google keyword tool' into the Google search box, and it should come up within the first few results.

To use this tool is very easy, simply type in the main two or three keywords or keyword phrases that relate to your business, for example if your business is security and alarm systems and you are located in Nashville, you would type in:

To achieve the most successful results you should use targeted keywords that include the names of local cities or towns, and the profession you are in. For example, if you are a dentist in Phoenix, you will research keywords that include those words in some combination or another.

The Google keyword tool will provide a long series of suggested keywords you can target. It will also include the traffic numbers for each keyword for each month or day. You can use the higher traffic keywords to nearly instantly gain traffic to your site, if it is available.

Again, try to include your city and service type in the domain if possible. This will help both search engines and your customers to value your site. A great technique for procuring a good domain name in a competitive market is to use dashes in the domain name. It will be indexed the same by the search engines.

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