Choosing Domain Name

Search Engine Optimization begins when you choose a domain name for your web site. This statement is not just hype as search engines seriously consider your domain name and other parts of the URL to determine Keywords your Web pages are most relevant for. Even if you have a well-established site, or your main site is named after the brand and the Keywords are not present in the domain, using additional domains for promotion can increase the relevancy.

As our main purpose in site optimization is to become visible and attract traffic from search engines, we should use all available methods towards this aim.

Your domain name, the URLs of your pages and your title tag are some of the most influential factors for your search engine rankings. Thus, choosing a domain name is an important step for obtaining a high ranking for your site. Experienced optimizers suggest looking at your domain name if you want to improve your search engine optimization. The definition of domain name is as follows – it is a name chosen by a site owner to be used as the URL or web page address instead of the numeric IP assigned by the domain name registrar. At this point, if you are at the website building stage and choosing a domain name you should follow the suggestions we will subsequently describe. If you are working with an established site, it's a good time to rename your pages so that the URLs contain the proper Keywords.

This topic is spoken about so much because when choosing a domain name people use words suitable to their business or tastes. Your company name or any word which doesn’t belong to your Keyword phrase area is not effective until your company is already well known. But in other situations it will be silly to ignore your Keywords or create a page that is next to impossible to remember or type manually. Use your domain name as one technique to improve your search engine optimization. The conclusion is that you should try to use a domain name which contains your Keywords (those you've found during your preliminary research). Here should be a Keyword phrase that can describe your product or service. The process of choosing a domain name is rather time-consuming, as you should find the proper name and make sure it will promote your site and assist in optimization.

There are more advanced technologies for choosing a domain name if you do some research beforehand. In this case, it is helpful to test the chosen domain name on sample pages. You must verify whether they bring traffic from search engines or not.

If you have chosen a domain name, continue by registering this name, then set up the file structure and page names, and begin developing the content of your pages for site optimization. Here it is very important to optimize the internal site structure and content and so on for the chosen Keywords and Keyphrases.

Another good way to choose a domain name deals with obtaining an already existing name. In this situation you will gain many advantages with your new domain name. There will be backlinks and traffic from the search engines that will be a great asset for you to obtain if you register a new domain name. Sometimes sites with new domain names need half of a year to obtain such results in the major search engine ranking.

But of course if you choose a domain name with Keywords you may encounter some drawbacks and objections:For example, Keywords in the domain name may look too unprofessional, and you (or your client) have already registered a domain, so it's too late to change.

This situation can be solved thru an optimal solution which is to get another additional domain name which contains your Keywords. This additional domain name you must redirect to your main website.

Adding Keywords is also good for the naming of your pages. Use Keywords in the URLs of your pages as this is important for the search engines. You need to bear in mind that search engines rank pages, not sites.

There's a widespread opinion that solely stuffing URLs with Keywords will lead to really good rankings. The situation has changed and now this method is not very effective anymore, with the exception of Inktomi. That being said, having your Keyword in the URL in your domain name and page URLs will be an added bonus, though not a decisive factor. Many other factors are important for a high ranking in the major search engines. Usually for indexing, engines consider many more factors than those they can find on your pages.

If we look more closely at the process of ranking by search engines, the relevance of off-the-page and many on-the-page factors will be visible. In order to enhance the popularity of your site for search engines you should pay attention to the balance of link exchange, text used in links that point to you, what the Page Rank of the linking pages are, whether the page is present in some directories under related categories, etc. The spider will consider all these factors before putting your page into an index.

If you have decided to properly populate URLs with Keywords, you need to remember some rules. First, search engines cannot separate the Keywords from one another if they are written together in one word (except in some cases like Yahoo). As has already been mentioned, choosing a domain name with Keywords is just as important as the domain name. And the most ineffective scenario is to use a page name that has no Keywords at all. Of course, there are methods of also improving on this type of situation. At this step, if you already have a fairly large website, you might start looking for a solution to rename all your pages and keep the link structure working.

This process can be executed with the help of some useful programs. Macromedia Dreamweaver offers a solution with its "Change links sitewide" feature. Web CEO’s built-in HTML Editor also has a Find-and-Replace function which you may apply for multiple pages of your site to rebuild the links.

Choosing a Domain Name with targeted Keywords and Keyphrases has one more advantage: when a site links to you using your domain name as the anchor text, this link gives you more weight on the search engines for the Keyphrase used in the link anchor text. Directories such as DMOZ and Yahoo often won't let you specify the anchor text of your link - they'll use the site's name. This is the case where choosing domain names rich with the Keywords again help.

So speaking about domain names it is important to underline the next main points: your site needs to contain strategic Keywords and Keyphrases in the URL of your home page and try to use page-related Keywords and Keyphrases in the page names, following the same principle.