A domain name is simply an address one can use to access the files of your website, you might even compare it to a phone number that people would call if they wanted to contact you. The domain name is what people will type into their browser, which will take them to the content that your website provides that they are trying to reach.
If you were to visit the home page of this website you are on right now, in the address bar, you would see the domain name; newleafwebsitedesign.com.
Choosing The Best Domain Name
As you begin thinking about how to choose a good domain name and what domain name you would like to have for your website or one that you are building for a customer, there are several important things I want to encourage you to consider.
The first is one that is often overlooked, and is this; just using the name of your business is not always the best idea. Sometimes it is better to incorporate a few keywords into your domain name that people might be using when they search for your products in search engines.
Questions To Consider
- What are the main products or services that you provide? This can help you focus in on specific keywords that the structure, content, and domain name of your new website should be built around. This is important to ensure that people searching for what you offer can find you in the search engines like Google.com
- When a potential visitor interested in what you are offering visits a search engine, will they most likely search for the name of your business, or will they search for the name of a product or service that you provide? If you think they will be searching for a specific product or a service that you provide, then it might not be a bad idea to think a little bit about incorporating a keyword or phrase into your domain name, either in addition to the business name or sometimes you don’t need to have to business name in your domain name at all.
SEO Basics & Domain Names
The reason I suggest thinking about the above questions is due to the fact that the domain name is one of the most important factors that search engines use to determine how high of a priority they will place on your website as it relates to the terms being searched for.
I don’t want to get too far into that now because it can get a little confusing at first, but just give it a little thought. The following illustration should help to explain what I mean.
Illustrations and Examples
Here is an example to help illustrate the importance and application of the ideas and concepts we were describing regarding choosing a domain name above.
SEO For Domain Names – Example: ”Let’s say you own a company that builds guitars, and your company is called “Rockin Guitars”. Your company may produce electric guitars, and the type of electric guitars could be something like maybe, “red vintage style electric guitars”.
The potential customers you are trying to reach would likely be searching for; “red vintage style electric guitars” as they type a query into Google or other search engines rather than searching for “Rockin Guitars”. So in this example, it might be good to consider adding the other keywords being searched for into the domain name.
There are no hard rules to this, so I’m just suggesting you consider these things; there is really an art to getting a feel for the times when this is the right choice. No one will know your industry, niche, or market space like you do, so it is totally up to you to decide which domain name to choose.
Applying SEO For Domain Names – Example: If the owner of the company in our example decided to include some keywords in the domain name in addition to the business name, it might end up being something like these:
RockinElectricGuitars.com
RockinVintageStyleGuitars.com
RedVintageStyleRockinGuitars.com
Or whatever seems right to you. The domain name becomes a little longer, but in some cases, it will give the site an advantage when trying to rank well in search engines for those terms and getting your website out there in front of potential visitors and customers. It also will help to increase your chances of finding a domain name that is available for purchase at a domain name registrar.
