Picking a Good Domain Name for
Better Search Engine Placement
How to pick a good domain for better search engine placement as part of optimizing your site for the search engines during the design phase.
For the perfect domain name matchup in a search engine so that a page of our "Alfa Romeo Alfetta" website comes up #1 in the search results, the website would be named:
http://www.alfa-romeo-alfetta.com
The website name would equal exactly the keywords in the search. Picking the correct domain name for a website is a good first step and can help a lot in how near the top of the search engine rankings your site shows up when someone searches for your key words. It certainly won't hurt to have a great domain name that exactly describes your website.
You can find out which domain names are available by going to this site: Faster WhoIs or Domain Name Soup. Enter possible names for your website. If the name is taken, it will tell you. If you find a good one is still available, you can go to www.registerwizards.com and register it cheaply and easily. Play around with some other names for your site -- get creative, and don't forget about the .net and .org and .tv possibilities.
(As an aside: If you need a good, cheap web hosting company -- the best one we've found, and the one we use and recommend to our clients, is Data393 They offer a lot of practical features and are very responsive - and inexpensive.)
Some people frown on using hyphens in a domain name--but hyphens can work fine as part of a secondary domain name. Some of the search engines recognize the words between the hyphens in a domain name and give your site better placement for them. Every little bit helps.
You have the option of using this second domain name for your site solely for the purpose of registering it with the search engines for good placement of your website. So what if it ends in .net or .org, or has hyphens in it -- who cares? It won't matter. For your normal marketing purpose, you can always stick with the domain name you already have, ending in .com and without any hyphens. It's true that most people will think your website should end in dot com, and it can be a real hassle to have to tell them there are a couple of hyphens in it every time you tell someone your URL.
If you have already registered a domain name and it is not what you'd like, don't despair. You can register as many domain names as you like for $15.00 each per year through www.registerwizards.com and have them all point to the same website (IP address). A lot of the good domain names are gone, but if you find a better name than the one you have, great! Snag it and have it point to your IP address. If not, write this step off and move on!
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This page last updated 2008-05-17.
