Choosing Search Optimized Domain Names
Choosing a good domain name for your business website can be very hard but it is also essential to get it right, after all you want it to work for you. In this article I explore the many different aspects that you should be considering when deciding on a suitable domain name. I also take you through the steps I follow when choosing an appropriate domain name for my websites.
All things considered what we are trying to achieve is a website domain name that adequately describes your product or service, is broad enough to allow for some growth and scope in product or service, is simple enough for a person to recall and contains your most important keywords/phrases. From an Internet marketing perspective there are also considerations of company and product branding that may be brought into this specification. From an SEO perspective it may be better to use an older or established domain name that has been registered and known by the search engines for over a while, these tend to be rated more highly by Google in a respect point of view.
To do the following tasks, I like to have a couple of browser windows open and a spreadsheet program. It may be required that you signup and login to certain websites, but these are all well known and respectable websites and do this at your discretion.
1. Load up overture inventory keyword volume checker in your browser window. Type in your product name or service and submit. Copy the results across into your spreadsheet.
2. load WordTracker in your browser, either using the free trial account or if you have a normal account, login. Now using the wizard type in the same product or service you type in the previous step. Run through the wizard and again, highlight and copy your results across into a new space in the spreadsheet.
3. Load up Google Adwords in your browser. Navigate to tools->keyword tool and type in the same keyword we used in the previous two steps. Ensure use synonyms are checked. Copy all words across into selected keywords and click estimate search traffic. Copy all results into a new space on the spreadsheet.
4. Using the spreadsheet we should have three columns and what we are looking to do is this step is weed out all items that are unrelated or irrelevant by deleting them from the spreadsheet.
5. Sort the three lists by search volume. Working from the top down, highlighting and copying to a 4th space in the spreadsheet the highest searched on and most relevant phrases. Repeat these steps until you have the top 10-15 phrases and keywords.
6. Identify your target market. Are you customers searching for your product in your local region or are they open to World wide suppliers? Having identified this we should use this as the domain extension (.com, .co.uk, .com.au etc) in the next step
7. Using this basic list identified in step 5, you might be lucky and be in an industry with little or no competition, so what we do here is remove any white space in the phrases and input them directly into your favorite bulk domain name registering tool. Check them all and see if we are lucky to find one of these is still available for registration. If the highest searched on term you have identified is still available and this strongly relates to your product/service you should register it now. If none of these terms is available then try using a dash (-) between words and also try adding words to the domain, like “the” or “buy” to get as close to the highest searched on term that you possibly can. You can also try re-arranging the words in the sentence.
So, now you have your list of 10+ domain names for your website to choose from and you should feel quite confident that they are relevant to your product or service, contain highly search terms and are short in length. If you are in debate over which one to choose then always go for relevant and high searched terms first.
When you are choosing your domain name you will want to use keywords in your name that will help someone find your website easily by searching. When you include keywords in your domain name you are letting the name speak for your business.
Someone will know right away what you are offering just by the name. They can click on your website for details on the products that is offered on your site. Making your domain name keyword friendly can increase your chances of getting more business and increasing sales.
When a customer does not purchase something the first time they will probably return and possibly purchase the next time. In the future they know where they can find your site and what all it offers.
Keywords are very important when it comes to domain names and it will set you apart from other sites online that offer similar products that no one knows about because of the name. Before you get started using your name you need to make sure it is unique and not already out there.
You will need to do a search to see if someone else has already registered the domain name for their business. If the name you have chosen is not in use then you need to register it before someone else. If the domain name is already taken, you will need to choose an alternative domain name that will describe your business using keywords. Using keywords will increase your customers and your sales.
When it comes to search engine keywords, there are some that are potential gold mines that are being ignored. These are ones in which a word or phrase is accidentally misspelled. Usually, the search engine will link to results that contain the correct spelling, but it will still show any websites associated with the misspelled keyword. If one of these websites catches the eye of a surfer, they may visit it. This is why many webmasters will not only create websites around misspelled keywords but also pay money to bid on them in pay-per-click search engine advertisements.
But misspelled keywords can help in another venue of Internet marketing… one’s domain name. When a popular misspelled keyword is included in a domain name, the search engine bots will be more likely to notice the website. Granted, it won’t get listed with the properly spelled keyword, but even traffic from a misspelled keyword is better than nothing. A person will just have to decide whether they want their website to be branded with a domain name that has an improper spelling.
So, how exactly can a webmaster make such a determination when they are deciding on their domain name? Well, first they need to look at what their website is for. If they are just doing affiliate marketing or Adsense promotion, it doesn’t matter as much if their domain name is branded properly. This is because they are not promoting their own business. However, if they are using a website to promote a company, they will want to try to keep their domain name as professional as possible.
Secondly, a webmaster needs to see if there is profitability in a misspelled keyword. Even though a misspelled domain isn’t as harmful to a webmaster promoting affiliate sites, they don’t necessarily want to make it a first option, especially if the misspelled keyword in the domain name doesn’t get much traffic. To determine a misspelled keyword’s profitability, a person can look it up in a keyword analyzer. In fact, some paid keyword analyzers, (such as Word Tracker), even have features where a person can see which specific types of misspelled keywords are worth taking advantage of.
If a misspelled keyword fits both of these criteria, a webmaster may want to consider putting it in their domain name. From there they will need to decide if they want that keyword to be included in the content. If it is then there’s an even greater likelihood search engine bots will index the website according to the misspelled keyword. However, if it’s not there’s still a chance that the website could be indexed according to the correct keyword, though if this ranking is low, it may not be a preferable option.
The webmaster will ultimately have to decide whether their content still looks ‘professional’ with the misspelled keyword. Some words, (such as mesothelioma), are so hard to spell, that a person may not even notice improper versions of it. If this happens they won’t have any issues seeing it so many times in the content, since they didn’t really know how to spell it right themselves.
In conclusion, including a misspelled keyword in one’s domain name could be an excellent way to covertly get website traffic, at least if a webmaster knows what he or she is doing. If they don’t a misspelled domain name could cause a person to think negatively about a website.
For this reason webmasters must take caution in which misspelled keywords they choose for their domain names along with whether or not they continue to use it in their content.
By Lynne Lee
Why does my website need to be on the first page of Google?
If your website isn’t on the first page of Google it is virtually invisible. Only 10% of searchers bother to search beyond the first page of search results. If your site is not on the first few pages, it is unlikely that your web site will ever be seen – except by you and your friends!
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts know many of the factors that Google weighs to determine which websites will rank on the first page of search results, but no one knows exactly how much weight Google attaches to each factor. Even the experts get it wrong sometimes, spending vast amounts of money on SEO can be a waste. No one can guarantee you the number 1 spot in Google or any other search engine, and if they do, it will only be for keywords that hardly anyone searches for.
Can you really get your site listed on the first page of Google?
Yes, you can get onto the first page of Google – if you follow basic search engine optimization principles and are prepared to work hard. Getting listed on the first page of Google depends on a number of factors:
Identifying profitable keywords
How much competition there is for your chosen keyword
The number of pages your website has
How much keyword rich content you have
How well you use keywords on your site
Your site’s domain name
How may incoming links you have
Amongst others…
What you need to do to get on the first page of Google and make more sales
Make sure your website is the best for the services and products you offer. If your site has long blocks of unbroken text, is cluttered, difficult to navigate, unattractive or doesn’t have what people are searching for, then even if your site gets to the top of search engine rankings, the increased traffic won’t be much good to you.
Add regular features, articles and special offers, give your visitors good reason to return to your site. Note what your competitors are doing and keep abreast of new trends. Research, update and constantly improve. Make sure you have an opt in box and give your visitors a good reason to give you their email address so that you can keep in touch and bring them back to your site.
Identify the best keywords for your website. Give the search engines good reasons to include your site when they are listing relevant search results. Help your website to be found by including the words people are using to search in your text.
Apply standard website optimization techniques to your website: keyword density, keywords in page titles, descriptions, headings, sub headings, anchor text, alt image tags…
Sprinkle your keywords throughout your website and make sure you use your keywords in context. Mix up your keyword phrases, and make sure your text doesn’t sound stilted or un-natural. The last thing you want to do is get on the first page of Google but lose customers.
Build lots of one way links to your website. Each links counts as a vote in your favour and is a key factor in search engine optimisation.
While SEO is important and worth paying for if you can afford it, there are many things you can do to optimize your website if you can’t afford to pay an expert. Just remember that optimizing your site takes time and you are unlikely to see immediate results unless you have identified a keyword that has little effective competition.
And the bonus is that even if your site never gets to be on the first page of Google, following these steps will benefit both your website and your business.
If you have a website or blog and you’d like more visitors, I’d like to offer you How To Get More Visitors To Your Website for free so that you can discover where to put your keywords for maximum SEO effect. Just click this link and you’ll have your free audio in minutes.
http://www.seoissimple.com/howtogetmorevisitorstoyourwebsite2.html
You will also receive a free report, Really useful Free Traffic Tips so that you can start getting more than your share of free search engine traffic.
Lynne Lee is a life coach and SEO mentor, you can discover more about Lynne and download many useful free resources at http://www.lynnelee.com
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