Great Domain Name Secrets

The first step to building a website is of course to register a domain name. So, that's what we're going to cover here.

The purpose of your domain name

For this system the purpose of your domain name is basically to help your search engine rankings. If on the other hand you were creating an authority or E-commerce site you might choose something memorable, even catchy. Partly because you'd want to target tens, maybe hundreds of keywords and so a general domain name would be better. And partly because it would be more important for visitors to remember it. 

This isn't so with sniping. While we will try to keep in mind human visitors, they are definitely NOT the priority. The priority is pleasing the search engines and having a keyword rich domain name will help your rankings greatly. 

Some search engine optimization experts believe that the domain name has very little impact. But I couldn't disagree more, having an optimized domain name is damn near ESSENTIAL if you want to rank for competitive terms without building backlinks.

How to structure your domain name 

So we've established that having an optimized domain name is very important to the overall website. So, how should I structure it? Well, it's very simple. Just have the keyword as the domain name, with nothing else. If you can get .com then obviously get that, if not get .net or .org. 

A note on .org or .net: I've had great experience with .org domain names on Google but bear in the mind that Yahoo doesn't like them. But who uses Yahoo anyway? I don't buy that famous statistic that only 60% of searches are conducted through Google. I suspect it's closer to 90%... But anyway... I tend to go for .org over .net because it just sounds better. .org's are after all meant for non profit, pure helpful information websites. Stay away from any other extensions such as .info (which is often associated with hackers and spyware).

What if you can't get `just the keyword'? 

What I usually do is add either review or info to the end of the domain name. Review will sometimes be taken but it's rare that info isn't available. These are just two but there are literally hundreds of words you could add to the end or beginning depending on your niche and your `presell story' - more on that later! 

Personally, I don't like hyphens, supposedly hyphenated domains work well because the search engines treat each word as a separate one but I've never had any luck. And when was the last time you saw a hyphenated domain in the organic results? 

Ok, so now you've got a domain name all we need to do is create the website. 

Note: I'm presuming you have a hosting account already, but if you don't then may I recommend you check out Bluehost ­ it's the company I use, I think it's like 7 bucks a month and you can host an unlimited number of websites on that same account. I've had a few issues with regards to installing some programs but overall they've been a fantastic company to work with.