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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.
This article was written by Joe Duchesne, president of
http://www.yowling.com/ , a budget web hosting company that
specializes in helping online business owners increase their website
traffic. Copyright 2004 Yowling. Reprint Freely. published by www.go4itmarketing.com |
