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How to Find Your Best Domain Name

How to Find Your Best Domain Name

Filed Under: Webdesign

After a long time of inactivity on this Blog, I just got started again.
Coming back to you while setting up a new WordPress website to write some stuff about finding your best domain name.

First of all, did you do your homework on finding the right keywords?
You will need them in this process, or not :-)

You see, there a two ways to go about this domain name searching, one is to incorporate your main keyword in the domain name, like -SEO for instance.
The other one is to look for a domain name that is short and sweet and easy to remember.

Using Keywords in Your Domain Name

The best option, of course, would be to have both… like wordpressseo.net which is short, easy to remember and contains the two main keywords Joomla and SEO.
Problem with this now would be that WordPress is more protected than before and the use of WordPress in a domain name should be approved by the Automatic.

This is just an example of how you need to think about using a brand name in your domain URL.
Amazon for instance and Google will contact you and start asking you to give that domain name to them since they are the holders of this registered trademark.
So be careful if you want to do that, or get permissions first!

Better is to look for a domain name that is simple and gets the right idea and stickiness to it, like alledia.com (now Joomlaschak.com) which is short, sounds good an is through its website content is now seen as one of the best sources for Joomla SEO.

As you can see, there is no Joomla and no SEO in the domain name itself, it is the content that works to boost its visitors and rankings in the SERPs.

Google doesn't care much about domain names Yahoo and Bing.com however still give you some points for having keywords in your domain.
I have a website about Network Documentation (I am an ICT Manager in my Daily work…)  and it used to rank nr one in Bing.com and nr three in Yahoo, just because of the domain name….

I checked Google as well, but could not find it n the first 10 ! pages… so I need to do a lot of work there (it's a now a WordPress site and I am still learning SEO for WordPress as I go along)

Did you also see the main competition? and yes, networkdocumentation.com was already taken so they have a head start on me.
For my own domain name, I had to do a re-inclusion request at Google, since it was a spam site before I got it.
So here is a tip: if you have found a nice domain name and it is free! (check that first with your hosting provider) go to www.archive.org and use the “Wayback machine” tool to see if it was used before and how it looked like. That is how I found out why I couldn't get it into Google at all in the first place.

Short and sweet Domain names

You could also do some brainstorming sessions to get spunky names or if you are trying to build a brand on the Internet use that brand name.
Like Alledia or Hummerbie as a simple example.

Just make sure the names are short and use a good keyword rich title for your website since you now want people to use a link to you with the keyword you target.
Mostly they will use the title of your site to create a link. So for this Blog, you could link to Joomla SEO Blog but you also could use that same link title to link to Joomla SEO Blog ;-)

Use your imagination and you will see how creative you really can be once you start throwing your ideas on a white-board or a piece of paper (electric ones work fine too).

Domain Extensions

A short paragraph on domain extensions or tld's, you know, the endings of a domain name?

There are a lot of them and it looks like there are going to be even more if all plans as expected.
The best ones for an international market are .com .net .org which are simply the bests tld's.
But they could be taken and you need to venture out to other tld's or choose another name.

.info is not that good since some people think if you use that it is a spam site (I wonder why..)
You could also look at some foreign ones like .tv (expensive) or .it but those are just gadget like domains.
.mobi does work very well if you target mobile users.

What works best in extensions is to choose a tld that is locale to the market you want to target.
I use a .nl tld for my dutch web websites and that works great.

In conclusion: look at your competitors and what they use, look at your keywords list and be creative in finding that domain name that works for you!

P.s. If you have some great ideas on how to ease this process, don't hesitate to throw them into the comments.

Related posts:

Tools to check your website Search Engine Optimization.
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Is Google Custom Search Engine a new SEO Tool or Threat
Working your Images into Search Engine Optimization

Tagged With: Blog, building, domain, name, site 20 Comments

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Comments

  1. SEO Consultant says

    December 31, 2008 at 7:56 am

    i am sure there are seo effect on your ranking due to keywords in domain name, but we cannot say with keyword in domain name guarantee us high ranking and vice versa, i came across so many website they are ranking high with very competitive keywords(such as, luxury holidays, holidays to mauritius, northeast advertising etc)with out related domain names

    Reply
  2. blog keywords says

    February 4, 2009 at 2:49 am

    These days it can be tough to get short and sweet domain names. I think it would be wise to focus more on keywords in your URL first and foremost.

    Reply
  3. hummerbie says

    February 4, 2009 at 7:28 am

    @Blog K: You would be suprised how it is possible to get short and sweet domein names with a little creativity and thinking outside the box.

    Reply
  4. Domain Names Registration says

    February 17, 2009 at 8:54 am

    Think outside the box if you want a creative Domain name, Thanks for the tips though really usefull

    Reply
  5. SiteBetter says

    May 29, 2009 at 2:48 pm

    Thanks for a great blog post. It is very important to decide whether you want to build a big brand like: Alledia or you want to get instant traffic for a small website. Brands stand by themselves and will have more staying power among the masses. What are the most popular sites: Amazon, Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter? What are not so popular: women.com, cars.com, photos.com, etc?

    You can have a small site like: Vacation Golf Home and still get high rankings for “vacation golf homes�

    If you are able to realistically able to repeat your name in the URL, Title Tag, H1 Header tag, and in somewhere in your firsts paragraph without making it look stuffy, you have a good shot at good rankings through SEO. Some names surprisingly do no lend themselves to that. More descriptive words like in your example “Network Documentation� fit in nicely in all of those sections I had mentioned. Some brands would seem very awkward and would appear to be keyword stuffing for SEO purposes

    Hummerbie, thank you for exploring this subject. It is very important to understand these nuances when it comes to SEO and site optimization.

    Reply
  6. Phil Barnhart says

    July 5, 2009 at 7:51 am

    Good suggestion on using the Wayback machine. Sometimes those harmless-looking, perfectly-named domains may have a checkered past. Before picking up a domain name that may be banned or blocked due to previously delivering malware, trojans, or porn, you need to do a background check.

    But you need to go beyond the Internet Archive. There is a free Domain Background Check cheat sheet at http://siteriver.com/domaintest.php – just enter the domain name you are researching and over a dozen links are created to domain check, anti-malware, and other tools. You can quickly check if your domain name is ready for business or is still on parole.

    Reply
  7. Michigan City Pest Control says

    July 15, 2009 at 2:15 pm

    this is hard because most of the simplest names are all gone, and i’m not going to pay thousands of dollars for a site i can pay just a few dollars for. you just have to be creative these days.

    Reply
  8. SiteBetter says

    July 20, 2009 at 4:30 pm

    Keywords domains can be very effective for SEO search. But they can also bet forgettable and awful with branding. Remember pets.com? Actually, better example is to name three travel sites. Is any one of them hotels.com?

    I went for both. My site is new but I don’t get too many hits for “…how to make my site better…”

    @Michigan City Pest Control: You just have to be creative. If a stand name like SanDiegoDentist.com is taklen then you can think of creative names like MySandDiegoDentist.com, etc.

    Reply
  9. web hosting review says

    September 25, 2009 at 1:48 am

    One of my site not successfull using keyword targetted and almost same with very popular PR6 site. my site is http://www.reviewforjoomla.com, now i try to focus on my personal site http://www.andiwijaya.com. You right man google dont give much point on domain names, but PR yes.

    Reply
  10. Bill says

    October 1, 2009 at 1:55 am

    I think having any easy to remember and pronounce domain name would be important as well. It takes less time and money to brand a domain people will remember. But if one has quality content, I can see the benefit of a keyword rich domain.

    Reply
  11. Dolphin Hosting says

    October 12, 2009 at 9:03 am

    It’s hard to find or get a good .com these days. I don’t exactly like hyphen sites, sites with numbers, .net, .org, or dot anything else. Something with a .com is preferred, but terribly hard to find a decent and easy to remember name, which also might fit someones niche.

    Reply
  12. Seiska Seven says

    October 22, 2009 at 12:16 pm

    Domain name is probably the best way to make a site seo friendly but I would not count on yahoo and bing for traffic or examples cause they act way different than google and that search engine is the only one that matters. If you have good visibility in G then you will get that same visibility in others too. Subdomains are coming more hard to rank for so use exact domain name.

    Reply
  13. Joseph says

    October 23, 2009 at 5:17 pm

    This post was definitely worth reading. I have a lot to consider!

    Reply
  14. los angeles says

    December 9, 2009 at 2:00 am

    The domain name is definitely one of the most critical components of developing any online presence, both in terms of SEO, but also for user-perception of what the site/blog is all about.

    Reply
  15. get ex back says

    January 10, 2010 at 8:01 am

    There are some .info sites that rank well and a lot of visitors go there. It is not true that it is for spam sites. However, a lot of spammers use that domain because first year is usually cheap.

    -Kai

    Reply
  16. Herbert-Jan van Dinther says

    January 10, 2010 at 8:56 am

    @Kai & Los Angeles: Yes, .Info domains are getting better and better these days and are slowly becomming a good choice if a . com domain is allready gone.

    My preffered choice is still .com first, local domain namens like.nl second, then .net and .org or .info after that.
    It all depends on the kind of visitors you want to target and what kind of site you want to build.

    Reply
  17. free online virtual worlds says

    February 11, 2010 at 7:02 pm

    My preferred choice is also .com, .net and .org

    It’s also good if you’re able to get a .edu

    The length of your domain name is equally important as well. 4 and 5 letters word domains are pretty hard to get.

    Usually after I had created a new site on a new domain name, I will list it on a PR6 and above website because it helps to get Google to index it in 24-48 hours.

    Reply
  18. Eugene Radulov says

    February 24, 2010 at 11:26 am

    thanks, I was searching for info to find out more about using domain names, this was helpful for me.

    Reply
  19. Jonathon Bree says

    February 11, 2011 at 6:17 am

    It is so sometimes hard to find ourselves domain of our choice. But now a days so many extensions are available in market that you get lot of choices. But as u said the best international extensions are .com & .org. A very informative post but still feels many things are missing. So plzzz guys keep contributing ………. thanks to all

    Reply
  20. Matt says

    February 25, 2011 at 5:42 am

    If possible try and register a domain name which includes one of your primary keywords. The benefits of doing this is that you can increase your click through rates from the SERPs plus it will help you build upon your keyword rich inbound links from other web sites.

    Reply

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