All you need to know about Domain Names and Extensions
The most frequently asked questions when building a web site are about which domain names to choose. So we shall now discuss about choosing the right domain names and their various effects and usages.
Finding the right Domain name for your website
Always remember: NEVER EVER change the domain name of your website once its created and ranked on search engines. Doing so will be highly disadvantageous to your site, affecting its rankings for almost six months to a year.
The two most important ranking factors Google deeply values:
1. The duration and quality of incoming links on a website.
2. The age of a website i.e. how old it is.
When it comes to choosing the right domain name, it largely depends on the kind of website you want to build. Keeping a short, striking and easy for people to remember domain name proves to be effective in the long run. The best examples of such domains that have been huge successes are Amazon.com, ebay.com, Google.com, wikipedia.org
This too depends entirely on you. Whether you want a business site or establish a brand recognition. If you want to coin a brand name then make up a domain name that includes your keywords in it.
We shall see the positive and negative effects of this:
Developing customer friendly domain names
If you want to develop a business friendly website then your site’s domain should be easy-to-remember, if possible short and simple and not very long containing hyphens. As at times, it is hard to recall and remember and annoying to the user to type-in the long domain every time they would want to visit the site.
To get the best of both worlds, choose or make up a domain name that incorporates your targeted keywords. Make it short i.e. is easy for media people to share it with one another.
Building Keyword rich domain names
If you make up your mind to create a keyword rich domain name to rank top on search engines, then incorporate the most relevant keyword in your domain, for example:
http://www.lawyers-firm.com
Firstly, when a site links to your website, you would want them to use your targeted keywords in the visible text i.e. the anchor text. This becomes an important attribute leading to increased and higher rankings on search engines. For, your domain already carries with it the keywords from which you benefit immensely and majority of the sites that link to you will use your domain as anchor text.
Secondly, incorporated keyword in domain name makes a huge difference with regard to visitors click-throughs. On Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), users by and large fail to notice domain names without the integrated keywords and tend to look over and open domains including the keywords. As often it gives the notion of added credibility even though if your competitor promises to offer equal services and ranks one step ahead.
Such a deal is closely monitored by dial-up connection users as their per page loading takes time. So while their page loads, they study every possible domain name on the page and decide to open one that has a keyword incorporated, furthermore, to save time.
Thirdly, though search engines might consider your domain name as noteworthy – the one impediment keyword rich domains have is that the most relevant of the keywords are already been taken. Therefore, you are left with no choice but to choose an added or extra or a further specifying keyword making your domain name longer. For example, if you are a caterer in New York and then that keyword has already being taken, you may want to specify in which borough are you located i.e. Manhattan.
http://www.caterers-manhattan-newyork.com
Such long hyphenated domains proved as rich and resulted into higher rankings earlier, but, with the course of time these domains were not given enough credit. Gradually search engines became skeptical about them. Not only this, but such long hyphenated domains are difficult to remember and say out loud. If someone wants to share such a domain name, they would have to say “caterers dash Manhattan dash new york dot com” instead of “caterers Manhattan new york dot com.”
To stay in the competition, you must be ahead of your competitors by purchasing domains with or without hyphens that are available at less than $7 a year. Keeping them out of reach of your competitors.
Make sure you avoid establishing domains with double hyphens.
http://www.abc–firm.com
As most search engines do not index such sites and is hard for people to remember.
Maintaining Balance is no joke
Developing a website that is liked by users, by search engines and that has a domain name with an incorporated keywords or without (is the first preference) or with hyphens and also establishes a brand name. Maintaining this balance is not an easy task. For exceptions are always rare, for example , domains like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Amazon, ebay – were successful and popular enough do get all these qualities.
Your target may be in specific areas. If you intend to build a business website for a long range of time with a unique brand value then set up a short and easy-to-remember domain name that proves to be effective for marketing purposes as well. Or if you merely want to gain top rankings on search engines then build a keyword rich name with dashes.
No matter what your aim is, building a keyword rich domain name will always help in boosted rankings. As mentioned earlier, to be on the safer side, register as many as possible keyword combination domain names for yourself. This will surely be of help for future use.
Which domain extensions to choose – .com, .org, .net, .biz?
Searching which URL is available for you under .com, .biz, .net, .info categories. If you are outside United States or hosting from outside another country then it is possible for you to get a country-specific domain extension, like, .co.uk or co.in or co.au, etc. Equal billing is given to all these country extensions as well. In comparison to .com extensions there are less or rather hardly any registrations.
The most dominant domain extension is .com, it is by and large the most commonly used extension, having its own pros and cons. When people are not sure of the domain extension of a website they by default think .com to be the extension of the website. This steals from you certain amount of web traffic therefore you must be aware of such facts.
You need country specific domains if your website is not in the United States. And if you want it to be found on Google US, under the search “pages from US” then either your site needs to be hosted from US or contain a country specific extension ( .co.us ). Forwarding your .com version to the country specific domain can be done, once you own a .com version to control the type-in traffic.
Another thing you must aware of, is the use of .edu and .gov extensions. Though it is believed that Google gives some added ranking credits to sites with .edu or .gov extensions, they are restricted to only educational (.edu) and governmental (.gov) websites and are unavailable to commoners. Whereas, .org extension stands for not-for-profit organizational sites thus a commercial site must never be given this extension.
The most frequently asked questions when building a web site are about which domain names to choose. So we shall now discuss about choosing the right domain names and their various effects and usages.
Semaphore Software is a SEO Company in India that offers Affordable SEO Services, Link Building Services, SEM Services, Social Media Marketing, Search Engine Reputation Management
March 11th, 2010 at 9:47 am
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