Tips for Choosing a Good Domain Name

A top level domain name can be one of your most valuable sales tools and is especially critical if you are selling or promoting products online. Having a domain name with the product or service as part of the name is interpreted by the average surfer as having more authority or credibility.

It is believed in some SEO circles that search engines will consider your domain name when ranking your site, and therefore the domain name should have some clear relationship to the product or service that you are promoting.

On the other hand, it is also believed that if any importance is given to the domain name, it will be very little, as the content on the page and the strategic use of keywords and phrases in titles and links are considered more important.

As with all things related to SEO, it makes more sense to work logically rather than simply following what others assume to be the case. If you currently have an aged domain name, then you should use it and not change it simply because of some SEO assumption.

On the other hand, if you are creating a brand new web site then you have nothing to lose if you consider choosing a domain name that has a clearer relationship to your products and/or services.

So, what can you do? Well, here's a couple of very simple tips that you can use to get top level names for a web site.

• Try a plural version of your key phrase, rather than the singular version. However, it has been my experience that when the singular version of a phrase has been taken, the plural version has been taken.
• Try using numbers in the domain name. Not numbers at the beginning of the domain name like 00mydomain.com, but using numbers that can easily translate into words such (2) for "to" and (4) for "for".
• Try combining numbers with the letters. For example the letter "u" can be read in a domain name as "you".
• Keep an eye out for particular words that sound authoritative and can be used for two word domain names such as "guide", "professional", etc.
• Try adding prefixes such as "my", "your", "our", etc.
• Research keywords and phrases using a search tool that will give you "long tail" search results. I often use Keyword Elite when I'm researching which gives me access to many name variations that I would not have thought of myself.

These combined tactics just might help you find a good, short, and top level domain name that can relate closely to your product or service.