Wednesday, October 10, 2012

The Best Domain Name For SEO

By William McEwan


The most important decision when creating a website is likely to be the domain name. When the time comes to make this selection, there are two schools of thought. The first is creating a domain that comes close to a popular search term people use to find a companies product or service. The opposing concept is to brand a company by creating a domain name that is company specific. This article talks to both approaches and weighs the benefits of each.

For illustration, let's assume that a business named Tiny Treats sells cupcakes in New York City. A potential customer may use various searches to find what they want. If we assume we're not limited to domain names, it makes sense to concatenate a geography to a product or service. Through keyword analysis we might find that a typical person uses "new york city cupcakes" to search. A perfectly matched domain would then be newyorkcitycupcakes.com. Since this domain name matches a customers target search, they are very likely to get the jump on a non-matching domain. This is because the search engines give relevance to domain names and since they match it provides a benefit.

There are also downsides to a keyword matched domain. They certainly are limited to the audience they target. People search for products and services in vastly different ways, so a matched domain may not provide the benefit expected. In addition, a customer may wish to create a brand name. With a matching domain, that isn't possible. "A matching domain name can also be viewed as a negative or phishing attempt," says Chloe Gimblette of a NJ Web Design Company. "This is due to many advertisement related websites using domains of this type."

The other choice would be to use a non-matching brand-name domain selection. Again, without looking at domain providers, the immediate choice is creaturefeature.com. This would create a customer brand since it's the company name. An existing customer would have no problem finding that site on the Internet by using the company name. Think of business like Yahoo or Sears. These names don't mean anything by themselves that could be associated with a product but conjure an immediate brand. What you do see a lot are customers who create internal search-matching URLs inside their site. For a company named Creature Feature who do pet grooming, CreatureFeature.com/pet-grooming-seattle is a way to provide a search engine benefit but still keeps the brand name intact.

While some people would rather have a domain that sounds like a brand name, there are still several advantages to finding a domain that matches customer searches. You will definitely see a bump in search results for that search term and site lets searchers know that its content is relevant to their needs. Of course not every domain name is still available and sometimes the lack of a decent matching domain may force you toward a non-matching selection. The key is to find a matching domain that fits the company well.




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