Importance of selecting domain name in SEO

| Mar 09, 2010 | Comments 14

Your domain name is perhaps the single most important (yet overlooked) way to attract people to your site. Lets take a simple example.

Lets say we want to build a website for Tabitha Grear (fictitious name) who is a freelance chef that mainly specializes in traditional Hawaiian recipes. Since 90% of all traffic on the internet is directed through search engines we need to optimize our site for the name Tabitha Grear. We want to be the first search hit for anyone who types “Tabitha Grear”,  but also for her cook book Grear’s Hawaiian Payan Crazy Recipes (:-D).

This seems like such a basic principle, but its a concept most people forget when choosing a domain name. Many people get caught up in make a very clever and intriguing name (myself included). If we make khanapakana.com (Urdu word for cooking) , then that site is going to have a much tougher time to get ranked for the keywords “Tabitha Grear” then TabithaGrear.com although Khanapakana may sound cooler. The reason is simple, most new websites don’t have content that show search engines this is the official site for Tabitha Grear or the time to have several links pointing to their site so search engines really have nothing to go off of other then the name of the domain. How can we apply this to everyday business sites?

Lets take a more practical example. You have a Small Book Store that focuses on Christian Books in the Atlanta metro Area. Well then, instead of JCBooks.com (even if thats your bookstore name), a better way to attract visitors to your site believe it or not would be AtlantaChristianBooks.com.

A great tool I often use is

Google Keyword tool

This tool will show you approximately how many searches for individual keywords a year there are. Finding a niche domain name is key to effectively market your site.

Common Myths

A common myth is that .net or .org will be lower ranked then a .com domain name. Insinuating that .com is inherently better then all other domain names. This myth simply is not true, .net or .org will be ranked based upon the same principles at .com.

 

Here's a followup written two years later as Google's search engine has evolved

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  • http://www.heavenlyoils.com Laurine Rehse

    Great info, thanks for the post!

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  • http://youyogamat.wordpress.com PiterJankovich

    My name is Piter Jankovich. oOnly want to tell, that your blog is really cool
    And want to ask you: is this blog your hobby?
    P.S. Sorry for my bad english

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  • admin

    Thanks for the great feedback, yes this is just my hobby. I haven’t been keeping up but I expect to post some new content shortly.

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  • http://www.marketingcitizens.com/index.php?showuser=2916 ParchdoXa

    This is my first visit here, but I will be back soon, because I really like the way you are writing, it is so simple and honest

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  • http://www.mrmarketology.com SEO Consultant

    As well as detecting bad phrases, you may find some new good ones. For example, you may see that a keyword phrase you did not optimize your site for brings useful traffic despite the fact that your site is on the second or third page in search results for this phrase.
    Using this methods, you will arrive at a new refined set of keyword phrases.

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  • Pingback: to domain name

  • http://www.scubesolution.com/ Social media optimization

    This is very great post…

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  • http://www.scubesolution.com/ Social media optimization

    i like it this post is very nice…

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  • http://backlinksdominator.com/ Bill Berg

    I agree, domain name is most important. I always include my keywords or phrases in the address.

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  • http://www.hollandclinic.com Mark Holland

    I totally disagree. Ultimately URLs are for people and they should be distinctive and simple. I am Dr. Mark Holland in Albuquerque and my medical weight loss practice is Holland Clinic. http://www.hollandclinic.com is a lot easier than http://www.albuquerquemedicalweightloss.com….unless, of course, my business name is Albuquerque Medical Weight Loss.

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  • admin

    While I can definitely see your point it ultimately comes down to the way you intend to drive traffic to your site. If you are handing out business cards and expect your prospects to type in your domain, then I think you’re right hollandclinic.com is alot easier. HOWEVER if you want to rank for organic traffic, and you see the specific keywords Albuquerque Medical Weight Loss is searched 2,300 times then you are going to have a helluva lot easier time marketing http://www.albuquerquemedicalweightloss.com for that specific keyword then hollandclinic. Also in that case you aren’t expecting people to type in your URL.

    Thanks for the comment

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  • http://www.hollandclinic.com Mark Holland

    Actually I admit that you’re correct. In fact I did the experiment. I have http://www.albuquerquemedicalweightloss.com and without doing more than making a homepage with a few keywords, it will show on the first serp for the search term “Albuquerque medical weight loss”. I didn’t articulate my original post very well because I didn’t think it through. What I actually mean is that for purposes of branding a brick and mortar business, a simple business-name dot-com URL is probably best, especially if, as I have done, one intends to seek a US Trademark. But that is a whole other world from ad-revenue-based internet marketing about which, I admit, I know terribly little.
    Actually it’s interesting being a small business owner trying to do his own SEO. Arguably it is a hundred times easier than what you guys do because of Google Places and the like, but in a fairly competitive business like weight loss, even a tiny City like Albuquerque has something like 35 businesses competing for ten slots on the first page. Anyway, sorry for the long post and thanks for responding.

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  • admin

    No worries Mark, I’ve been trying to get more involved in this site by commenting on posts. Thanks for interacting I appreciate it and you bring up some valid points :-) .

    What I’ve noticed is that backlinks alone used to be able to get you very highly ranked and thats not true anymore. If you want to get ranked highly for Albuquerque medical weighloss it looks like Google’s Panda update really heavily values unique content. I’ve heard (not 100% sure) that they see how long you are actually on the site for in comparison for other searches. I started not being able to rank for alot of keywords on certain sites just using backlinks. But using backlinks in conjunction with unique contents (surveys, blog posts, user generated content) has helped me rank much better.

    Thanks for all your posts!

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