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Choosing A Good Domain Name |
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 So you need a domain name for your brand new internet business. You may
even have some cool ideas for a new domain name
combination that will
really impress your friends. Question is, is your new domain name going to help your business or hurt it?
What could be simpler than choosing a domain name right? Wrong. There
are a number of things you need to consider and research before you
register your favorite domain name.
First off, what is a domain name and why would I want one?
A domain name makes our lives much easier when surfing the internet.
You see, all computers on the internet are actually referenced with
what is called IP addresses. On the internet, IP addresses are four
sets of numbers that serve like street addresses allowing two computers
to talk over a network. An example of an IP address is the one for
Google.com. It is 216.239.39.99. If you enter this IP address into the
address bar of your browser it will bring you to Google’s home page in
that very same way that typing www.google.com would get you there.
Unfortunately, we humans have difficulty remembering our phone numbers
let alone so many digits for all kinds of sites. That’s one of the main
reasons domain names were invented.
Domain names make it easy for us humans to remember how to find a site.
Most people know Google.com and anyone familiar with the internet knows
that to reach Google, you simply type www.google.com in your address
bar and you are transported to their website. The same goes for
Disney.com, Microsoft.com, CNN.com, etc…
Now you would think that choosing a domain name would simply be a
matter of choosing something that is unique and that people would
remember. The problem with that approach is that most of us don’t have
the money needed to turn our name into a brand name on the mass market.
Most of us need to rely on our prospects reaching our website through
other means. The best of these are search engines.
Choosing a good domain name for your site starts with the main keywords
you have chosen to focus on for your website. Before you launch your
business, you should conduct some preliminary research online to
determine which keywords have the most traffic and the least number of
other websites competing for that particular keyword. Some tools that
help in this are the Overture keyword suggestion tool and
Wordtracker.com. Both of these tools will give you a rough idea of how
much traffic each of your chosen keywords will likely get each month.
This helps to determine which keywords to focus on.
Should you choose a domain name that includes your main keywords?
In most cases, the answer is yes. Google and to some degree Yahoo both
give you a small boost for your domain name. If your domain name
happens to contain your targeted keywords, your domain name will help
you in your quest for higher search engine rankings. Now if you do
everything else wrong, having your main keywords in your domain name
will not magically catapult you to the top of the listings. Many other
parts of your site must be working for you as well. Other things you
can do to improve rankings are beyond the scope of this article.
Choosing a keyword rich domain is a smart business move.
For some sites, it could be the edge they need to move up a few spots
in the search engines. When choosing a keyword rich domain name, you
may want to consider hyphens between your keywords. An example is
cheap-airline-tickets.com. Current research trends for Google and Yahoo
suggest that hyphens are the only way to separate keywords within a URL
that will give you a rankings boost.
Why not simply choose your company name? Simple. Is your company a
household name? Are you so dominant in a category that people have
stopped referring to the generic name of your category and use your
brand name like Kleenex has for tissue paper? If so, register your
company name. If not, register a keyword rich domain wherever possible.
You may be thinking, “But I already own a domain name that is my
company name. Should I go and register a new domain and point it to the
same site? The short answer is no. Years ago, you could improve your
rankings on search engines simply by setting up lots of doorway pages
and having them all link back to your home page with all kinds of
domain names. That tactic nowadays can backfire. You are better off
optimizing individual pages within your existing website than you are
creating a whole bunch of “fluff” sites just to increase rankings.
The technique I suggest above is really best suited for brand new
business ventures. If you still have not registered your domain name
for that special online business you are about to start, then make it
keyword rich wherever possible. If you have already launched your
business, you’ll just have to take advantage of this information next
time you start another online venture.
 Joe Duchesne
President of www.yowling.com,
a budget web hosting company that specializes in helping online
business owners increase their website traffic. Copyright 2004 Yowling.
Article Source: www.EzineArticles.com
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