Choosing The Most Search Engine Friendly Domain Name
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009When 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.
The first consideration is to try and choose a domain name that sufficiently expresses your services and/or products; it also needs to be a broad enough term that will cover any expansion in the products and services offered by the site. Ideally it is best to choose a name that can be easily remembered by people, to encourage repeat visits from customers that come to know your website domain name, along with the products or services that you offer.
To most successfully target important keywords from your industry you must know what they are. The easiest way to learn the most valuable keywords in your industry is to visit www.seobook.com and use their keyword tool for your research. Once you determine what keywords your audience is most interested in, choose your domain name around that information.
So how do you determine which is the best keyword to use?
Google has designed many tools to assist webmasters most efficiently use and comply with Google. One of these tools is called the “Google Keyword Tool” and can be located on their search engine when you type it in.
Start by entering important keywords related to your industry into the tool. It will bring up an entire list of keywords that are related to your original search term. That is your possible keyword list.
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.