The Four Most Critical Tips for Domain Name Selection
Posted by Anthony Glynn in Affiliate Marketing Tuesday, 10 November 2009 16:38 39 Comments
Part 1 of Our “Perfect Foundation” Series
Master these quick tips for picking the perfect domain name for your site:
1. Make it relevant.
- Make sure you have industry-related words.
- Make sure your words explain clearly what your site is about. Before you can choose the words, you need to consider what value your site will provide to visitors and exactly who your target visitors are. Then think of the experience your site will give your visitors, and use words related to that.
2. Add SEO.
- You would gain SEO by having hyphens in your domain name since search engines will see the words more clearly. However, people find it much harder to remember the site name when you use hyphens. Whether or not to use hyphens is a decision you’ll need to make on a case-by-case basis. (Note from editor: Even though the idea that search engines see keywords clearer when the domain has hyphens comes straight from speaking with an SEO web designer last month, many commenters to this article convincingly argue against the use of hyphens in domains.)
3. Pick words pregnant with emotion.
- An easy way to find psychologically powerful words is to write nonstop for three entire minutes about your customers from their perspective. Step into the shoes of ONE SINGLE fictional customer — the person who is your target — and really get into what their life is like, what keeps them up at night, and what they hope to do with their life.
- That step will get you into the mind of your customer so you can stream out words that powerfully affect you (now in the customer mindset): If you’re in the mindset of your customer and your customer is a guy in his early twenties buying your get-out-of-debt ebook, you can easily think of powerful experiences like, “When I go out with friends to dinner, I always order the cheapest thing on the menu and even that is out of my price range,” which you can use to communicate to your market that you understand their situation.
- Keep a notebook with you at all times — write down any powerful words or phrases that speak directly to your customer and their lives.
4. Make it memorable.
- Make it short (obviously). One way to keep your site name short is to find a phonetic spelling of a word or words related to your product. “Compaq” for example communicates “compact” and is phonetically spelled. It probably reduced the price of the domain name since it created a new word.
- Consider alliteration, as in the names Google and Bed Bath & Beyond.
Now go to Godaddy.com to look up and buy domains and hosting. If this is your first domain, just buy the domain and the basic hosting. Don’t worry about anything else such as concealing your identity as the site owner.
Next week, we’ll get into choosing the best content management system for your website. See you then!
Promotional: We also have a course on domain name selection within Affiliate Classroom 2 (ACV2), which you can try for 10 days for only a dollar — and then you will start getting the regular price of $97/mo. — at http://v2.affiliateclassroom.com.
Thank you so much for these tips. I wish I knew then that you had this type of lesson when I was just starting out but now too much water has gone under the bridge and I don’t know what ramifications, if any, will there be if I try to change my domain name.
Evelyn Guzman
http://www.debtchallenges.com
Thanks you so much for sharing this useful information about picking about domain…
Thanks
Alam
Most SEO’s say you should NOT use hyphen’s in domain names as it looks spammy in Google’s eyes, especially if you have more than 1 hyphen. Also, Google is smart enough to recognise the words in a domain without a hyphen
Wow. very interesting the same stuff I suggest to my clients but they don’t understand and sometimes don’t do it. they think i’m just trying to get more money. But this stuff works and works really well. One of my clients absolutely dominates organic listings 60-70% depending on search terms utilising these treats you have given away freely.. all the best richard saupe
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Tip number 3 is powerful. “Pregnant with emotion” Very good tip and way of expressing the importance of getting in the mind of the prospect.
Good information all around.
JR Durruthy
http://www.printriteprinting.com
Thanks for sharing
A lesson well learned after numerous mistakes, Thanks
Your products are amazing. It has helped me so much get inspiration and you guys are the real deal when it comes to affiliate marketing. If it were for you and Amit, I don’t think I’d be a successful affiliate marketer.
Another problem with dashes is that they lengthen the domain name. This is significant because each additional letter makes it harder to get to the top of page one. There is strong statistical validation for this factor.
Shorter domain names simply rank better.
[...] Promotional: We also have a course on domain name selection within Affiliate Classroom 2 (ACV2), which you can try for 10 days for only a dollar — and then you will start getting the regular price of $97/mo. … Here is the original post: Affiliate Classroom Blog » The Four Most Critical Tips for Domain … [...]
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It’s a name game. name,name, name has taken the place of location,location,location
I’ve just registered a new domain using these tips.
However, I have an old domain that was poorly named but has a significant amount of traffic and hundreds of back links. I think it would be counter productive to change the domain name for that site: https://lovetherates.com
Evelyn (the first commenter on this post) should give some thought to changing her domain name if her site has significant link equity.
I couldn’t agree more. You will climb in the search engines simply by matching title tags to the domain name. It is HUGE!!
Hi,
as I was born in Germany I can tell you my method for buying domains. If both, the version with a dash and without a dash, are available, I by both. But I am used to prefer the dashed version and redirect the version without dash with a 301. For linking proposes I use the none dashed version, as this will block some back link checkers ;-9
Cheers from China,
Sven
I agree.when it comes down to it your going to have to spend money to make money. Thatâ��s business. Iâ��m so green when it comes to online marketing (I have done click bank for 3 weeks) I didnâ��t make shit..I bought this Ebook I saw advertised on you tube and said what the hell…man, that was the best choice I have ever made…the book litterly paid for itself the 2nd dayâ�¦2 weeks later, im averaging around 150-160 dollars a day. .not to bad, especially with only two hours worth of time. Anyway.,,you may have stumbled upon it on you tube or elsewhere..there is a lot of different ones out thereâ�¦but I can tell you first handâ�¦try it out.. check out the page.. Good luck everyoneâ�¦I will post again in a day or two with an update. Heres the link.
http://tinyurl.com/ygf3eap
Great advise. Will bear in mind!!!
No comment, I am busy now.
Great tip’s, I also find the use of the long tail names can be good for SEo like with one of mine : http://www.freeinternetbusinessguide.com this is quite a new project, but getting hits already.
You should also get a free statcounter.com account and you’ll see just what people are using to find you.
Keep up the good work AC
Regards
Geoff Beattie
http://www.geoffbeattie.com
Great tips Aymen. I have always wondered about the hyphens in the domain and whether or not they were good to use. I appreciate your insight.
I did the same on my primitive website and guess what? It worked. Do it and you’ll see the results in a relatively short time, your site will climb the search engines because you’ve matched the title tags to the domain name. And when you casually work your keyword into the copy, it will compound the action.
Thanks for the reminder, Henryb
Very helpful, works all the time
I would also like to add that including hyphens in the domain name is usually viewed as less professional than those that don’t.
Just remember that since there are no hyphens, a good combination of words would be required to construct a name that isn’t so long that it cannot be remembered easily.
Be creative and always use words that fall in context with the website’s subject matter.
Using the .com extension is also a plus since again it gives a more professional feel.
The Affletic Afflete.
I know the power of getting the right domain for whatever you are selling or promoting.. I find that three word domains are even more memorable than two word domains. It seems more rounded.. just my opinion..
Helpful tip. Match up your domain name, title tag (keep it relatively short) and your copy and you’ll see the best results.
Always try to target long-tail keywords – these are the ones with searches but lower competition. It’s easier to get ranked for those keywords vs. fighting with the masses for main keywords.
sorry, hit enter before done with the post…
The theory is this: You can OWN the long-tail keyword results, or you can flounder trying to get a good rank for the most competitive.
Look at Apple. They have about 5% of the computer market. They OWN that market – their users will gladly buy just about anything they put out. Good to have that kind of audience vs. swimming with the masses, no?
gk
http://www.wisconsin-mesothelioma-attorney.org/Wisconsin-Mesothelioma-Attorney.html
As an old seo guru here are some additional tips.
1. Make sure the domain name you pick the keywords are in the same order, vitally important. Put the extra word at the end like review, guide, ebook, etc.
Example:
menwholookatgoatsreview.com is better than men-who-look-at-goats.com since more people are looking for reviews on the new movie by George Clooney.
Yes, Google does not like hypens.
2. I agree with the changing the domain name comments. But remember to build a silo structure for your websites in other words, make the new sites link to the main old site. That way the old site with the not so seo compliant domain name will still be primary as it has the most links and most pages. The other smaller new sites will give a boost to the older site.
For people that don’t want to mess with redirects this is a simple solution.
3. Link the sites round robin, in other words, site 1, links to site 2, links to site 3, etc. This is the basis for 3 way linking.
4. Make sure the new sites are not on the same IP, Google is smart and will easily see this if you have all the domains in a single reseller account and don’t have separate IPs. It is worth the extra money $7.95 per month to have new domain names set up on new hosting accounts.
5. Always make sure that they domain name words are in the same order.
Example: men-who-goats-stare.com would not work for the new movie.
6. Also using a, the, or, and, nor, simple words Google does not index. So the domain name:
themenwhostareatgoats.com would work fine, as Google does not index the word “the”.
Hope this helps the people that are trying to build a business. The EXACT match of the domain name to the keyword you are targeting is the key, that is 25% of the way of getting to the first page of Google.
Good luck with your business ventures.
Jennie Heckel
Dashes in domain names: the purpose of dashes in domain names to to clearly differentiate words, otherwise you may get unexpected results. For instance, if you are selling customised pens etc you arebetter off using http://www.pen-island.com rather than the same name without dahes.
Another tip is to select the country of your most important customers. If you only sell to UK then pick .co.uk, if you only sell to Germany then pick .de, if you sell worldwide or in US then pick .com. You will get better local ranking if you select a local country with local hosting.
I want to add to this discussion. I have domains that have zero keywords in them and are not memorable in any way. Some of these sites are great earners. Why? Even though they ignore SEO with regards to the main url? BACKLINKS! Yep, a bunch of highly focused articles with tons of the right BACKLINKS! He who has the best links wins. Go out there and get the best links to decent keywords and stop fussing over the name. Really. Don’t let a name stop you from getting real money.
TomG.
“4. Make sure the new sites are not on the same IP, Google is smart and will easily see this if you have all the domains in a single reseller account and don’t have separate IPs. It is worth the extra money $7.95 per month to have new domain names set up on new hosting accounts.”
Remember that the HostGator cheapie account has hundreds of websites on a single IP. My sites have never been penalized for this.
Here’s a remedy: Create hubs, properties at Squidoo, blogger, wordpress, buzzle and others and point the links to your site that’s having trouble or that you want to promote.
TomG.
Short url’s match more searches and match better than long urls’ Short URL’s are easier to remember. They are easier to re-copy into links. They are easier to read. They are simpler in concept. They adapt to changes better. But if there is one long tail phrase you’d like to rank for….go long. It might be available.
I think there are variables that can effect SEO and traffic, so if you don’t have a great domain name of course you can make up for it by having other factors like great backlinks and proper SEO techniques on your site. I like to pick domain names that are memorable, but it depends on what your are promoting, right?
I agree with that.
Domain names only play little importance.
You can make it up through good backlinks and SEO optimisation techniques.
Robert Stevens
http://www.osiaffiliate.com
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When starting a new business there are a number of items, which the online entrepreneur must consider before they can actually start trading, one of these is the Domain Name selection.
Hi,
Thanks for your information. It has helped me so much get inspiration and you guys are the real deal when it comes to affiliate marketing.
Thank you
I have three different web sites, all with hyphens and have never had a single problem with them. They were all picked up by Google and they’ve been there since, one of them is a PR3. I really don’t think it makes THAT big of a difference. If the SE can read your domain name and it makes sense, go for it. Also, it must make sense. A hyphenated name like “8%gM45-bats-hygromestation-hemidorph.com” won’t cut it, obviously, but “bobs-best-kites.com” is a GREAT one and shouldn’t have any SEO problems. I think it’s simple use of common sense that is the determining factor in whether or not Big G will like or dislike your domain name.
Thanks for the useful tip on hyphenating, had heard different views and useful to get some input from a trusted source.
All the best
Tom