SEO & DOMAIN NAMES

Buying a good domain name

Have you got the right domain name?
Domain names are quite simply the name of your website, this one is called BasicSEO.co.uk
Most visitors to this site will probably have a website domain already, but even if you do there are some things that you may consider, in essence there are three types of domain names:

Keyword domains - they say exactly what they are eg: ChickenCurryRecipes.com
Half keyword domains - they have the keyword(s) in there somewhere eg: InsuranceAvenue.net
No keyword domains - where you haven't a clue what they are about eg: Jerrards.com

Keyword domains:
If you don't have a website then primarily you should think about what words are relevant to your website in order for visitors to find you on the internet. These words are important as they will be your main keywords. For example if you have a website selling mortgages then it would be excellent if you could purchase www.mortgages.com, if you are selling pet food then perhaps www.petfood.com and likewise if you are offering a garden landscaping service in Manchester then you should consider GardenLandscapingManchester.co.uk or similar. If you owned the website petfood.com you wouldn't necessarily appear at the top of search engine results... but you'd have a very good start!

Keyword domains are by far the easiest to deal with as they directly use the exact phrase that you would want to be found with. Common sense would say that a website called ChickenCurryRecipes would do quite well if you actually wanted to open a website about Chicken Curry Recipes. Unfortunately the most obvious single word domain names (insurance, mortgages, gardening, gambling, property etc) were probably snapped up a long time ago by the web professionals of yesteryear so you'd more-than-likely be looking for good two or three-word combinations now, which takes us nicely onto the next category.

Half keyword domains:
These domains are generally two or more words of which one or more are your main keyword(s), basically a keyword and a filler. Some examples of this style being mortgagepro.com, holidayexpert.com, moneyspecialist.com, jewellerystore.com, Datingcorner.com etc etc.. where it's obvious what the keyword is because it has a great big juicy one in the name that is blatantly apparent. Entire businesses have been set up to accommodate website names like these. Half keyword domains are consistently present in the search enigne results often (as stated) because the single keyword domains have already been snapped up. Keywords are imperative if you can get them in your domain name because it gives the search engines something to get their teeth into - it tells them what you do. So let's take a look at a couple of search result examples....

Example: Surfboards
If you try this search on Google.com http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=surfboards&meta= you will notice the following sites listed on the first page:
www.cisurfboards.com
www.islesurfboards.com
www.surfboardshack.com
www.beachbeatsurfboards.co.uk
www.basesurfboards.com
www.firewiresurfboards.com
www.sitkasurfboards.com
not bad, 7 out of the first 10 have the word surfboards in the domain name, and it pretty much continues down page two - pretty compelling evidence (or huge coincidence) that having a keyword in your domain can help.

No keyword domains:
Which brings us finally to the No Keyword domain names that practically mean nothing at all.
Yahoo, Google, Jimmys, Emolution, Jerrards, JibberJabbey are all examples of domain names that frankly mean nothing at all - basically the hardest way to achieve SERP rankings. Reading the name you would have no idea what these sites are or what they do, for example what does WilliamsonAndSons.co.uk mean to you? Nothing of course - but if it was called ManchesterEstateAgents.co.uk you would have a pretty good idea straight away, and so would the search engines.

Maybe you are about to conquer the world with your new website called Zobbee.com or have an advertising budget of many thousands, in which case these domain names are for you. These domains are generally harder and more time consuming to rank in the search results - which costs more money. If you have fantastic or revolutionary content and want to be a billionaire then you might consider a catchy name.. and work very very hard at SEO, public relations, advertising, networking etc.

More than likely you already have a website so you probably won't want to change it, but that doesn't mean that you can't buy OTHER domains and use those too! I know if I was an estate agent in Manchester that I would probably buy the domain ManchesterEstateAgents.co.uk and use it alongside another domain if necessary, likewise if you happen to own a surfboard business called TrueLine and were after a website you should consider buying both TrueLine.com and TrueLineSurfboards.com

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