Although few people realize it, domain names are extremely important
when it come to search engine ranking. Not only is the domain
important but also what you name your pages and how you set up
your internal links within your website.
Domain names are not that difficult to come by at this point.
Godaddy.com puts out some great prices and they run all sorts
of specials once you become a customer. The more domains that
you buy the more that they like you. The basic concept here
is that people who buy a few domain names are probably going
to become pretty big on the internet. The more that you own
the more powerful you are. Domain names are like land in the
early eighteenth century. They are valuable and the owners
become a sort of elite class on the internet.
The value of domains is difficult to determine until you have
purchased one and worked with it for a while. The difference
between owning your own domain name and hosting your site on
a sub domain or in a subdirectory of a domain is huge. The
impact on your ability to perform SEO operations increases
drastically simply by the ease of clarifying your URL for the
search engines and directories that you submit to.
There are even directories out there that do not except anything
except for domains. These are the kind of elitist sites that
I described earlier. Domain names are the only way to go if
you want to have a seriously successful website that becomes
a household name. Directories that do not allow non-domain
names are there to protect an investment. If you have spent
money on purchasing and hosting a domain name you probably
aren't to excited about seeing sites that haven't dropped a
dime on investment being rated above you. This is a sort of
aristocratic mind set, but it is a natural tendency of the
mind. There are plenty of directories out there that everybody
is able to access, but there are some out there that are only
for the elite sites of the internet.
This elitist attitude towards domain names is beneficial to
your sites because it allows you to get an edge on other sites
simply by buying a domain name. This investment is the most
crucial SEO investment that you can make. There are very few
sites around that get huge numbers of hits (10,000+ per month)
without having their own domain name.
So what do you need to do to get these good rankings? Start
off by choosing a domain that matches your website well, and
you're killing two birds with one stone. Your domain name and
URL should reflect what you're trying to accomplish from your
site. For example: calling your website 'thewebcorporation.com'
isn't much good if it sells hot sauce. For hot sauce, deserthotsauce.com
would be a better name - the desert's hot, like the sauce!
Don't settle for anything that won't make people want to come
to your site. Using the name of your company for your domain
name is also a good way to go. This is the fastest way of providing
a good, quality description of what the visitor is going to.
Many visitors will actually consider your domain name the name
of your company anyway so you might as well name yourself something
that you want to be called.
Most webmasters settle for safe, can't-go-wrong www.myname.com
domains, because it takes time to be creative and think up
good names that contain your keywords. You might consider getting
some help from the people around you, as you never know what
they might be thinking that could be great. You need to come
up with a few ideas in case some are taken - you'll be surprised
just how many domains have gone.
Everyone always wants a .com, but you should not rule out
.net, .org, .us and the rest as these will still be much more
helpful in achieving a higher rank than choosing a name that
doesn't contain your required keywords.
