Having a catchy domain name is a great thing, but it may cost you in terms of SEO. Not only can the domain name help or hinder your search engine appearance but the names of your pages may as well. Suffice it to say, choosing a domain name is more than what sounds good. It tells search engines what your site is about.

Your first priority in choosing a domain name is to carefully select the word that comprise your domain name. If you are offering a service or good, try to choose a domain name that includes at least a portion of that service or good in the title. For instance, if you run a website that sells shoes, your domain name might be “shoeoutlet”, or “your-shoe-store.com”. It should be easily remembered and pertinent to your business.

Regarding the make-up of your domain name itself. You are going to be targeting specific keywords to generate leads for your business based on terms that are searched for. If there is a high number of terms for “tuxedo shoes” and your business offers rentals of tuxedo shoes, that would be a good keyword to go after. Orienting your on page seo efforts around that keyword may be a very successful strategy, but including it in your domain name may be the best thing you could do.

How the heck am I supposed to know what keyword to use?

There are several tools available freely online that can help you to establish the best ones to choose from, my personal favorite is the Google keyword tool. To find this simply type, ‘Google keyword tool’ into the Google search box, and it should come up within the first few results.

Start by entering important keywords related to your industry into the tool. It will bring up an entire list of keywords that are related to your original search term. That is your possible keyword list.

’security Nashville’ ‘alarm systems’ ‘alarm systems Nashville’ and ‘Home security Nashville’. Then click on ‘get keyword ideas’.

Once you have done this a series of keywords will be generated and traffic estimate will appear beside it. A very simple and useful strategy is to purchase the keyword with a high level of traffic as your domain. This will give you a strong edge on the competition in terms of SEO.

The goal is to include your area designation, ie. city/town name, and your service or good name in your domain name. This will have a two fold effect in making search engines favor your site and make it easier for customer to remember your domain. You can even throw in dashes here or there to make your domain stand out more.

Gavin King is an internet marketer and enjoys writing articles about any organic seo company and how to seo your own site in general. Remember to refer your friends to this article if you have found it helpful and visit our site at www.imgavinking.com for more information.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 8:17 pm and is filed under Business.