What’s in a domain name?

July 12, 2007

What’s in a name?

Domain name research and selection is undoubtedly one the most important aspects of the development phase of a web site. If you miss the boat on choosing the right name, you might miss a boatload of traffic.

The process of picking the right domain name for your web site can be broken down into two parts:

1. Researching the targeted keywords for your business.

2. Implementing the keywords into the site.

Phase 1 - Domain Name Research

Selecting the right keywords to include in optimizing your web site text and file structure is already a well established ‘must do’. Including that same attention to detail in your domain name can pay big rewards in giving you “the edge” over your competition. Several questions to discuss:

# How much is there to be gained in having keywords in the url?
# Are subdomains used with keywords effective in boosting a non keyword domain?

While researching the words to use in your domain name it is critical to grasp the “essence” of what it is you’re trying to accomplish. Traffic is good. Targeted traffic is even better and that’s ultimately what we’re after….qualified buyers.

We are advanced web searchers. Think basic. You’ve got to put yourself in the buyers shoes and think…”hmmmm, I’m looking for _____. If I go to MSN and type in _____ and see what comes up.” Think in basic terms. Get to know what the keywords are in the category you’re optimizing in. Find the niches. Find the meat and potatoes words and as BT would say “find the keyword gold”.

Phase 2 - Implementing the Keyword Strategy

Once the keyword strategy game plan is solidified, you can go ahead and start to select the domain name itself. Hyphenate the words unless you’re going to be using the name for offline promotion as well. In that case it’s a good idea to get both the hyphenated and non-hyphenated domains. Don’t forget you can also use keywords as subdomains if you want to use your company name as the domain name as well. Questions to discuss:

Is there a difference between .com and .net in rankings?

Are there advantages to using other tld’s such as .cc if you can get the keyword strings you’re looking for?

While having the keywords in the domain name is not absolutely critical, having the keywords as the site name is. As most of us have learned, this becomes painfully clear when applying for a listing at Dmoz, Yahoo and especially Looksmart. Using a short, descriptive , keyword rich title (including the header graphic) will ensure a much greater chance of success in slaying the evil editors who are actively blocking the pathway to your success in having great search results for your site. (Yahoo is one instance in life where the old hymn “just give me a cabin in the corner of Gloryland” applies…just be glad you made it in ).

With the “Big 3″ directory listings in agreement with the keywords in your domain name and site title, you can honestly say that you have done the best you can do to target your site in the search engine results (of course the rest of the site must be done properly also). At this point, you haven’t done anything underhanded (yet), except apply the skills you’ve gained from experience in dealing with the “system”.

So, “what’s in a name”? Location. Location. Location.

What about expired domains?

People should know that it’s possible to find domains with certain keywords in them that already have ‘quality traffic’ coming to them. And they can easily register them; they just have to find those expired domains.