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Choosing Domain Names For Search Engine Placement
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by
Anthony Butcher
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The following outlines the choice of domain names for
enhanced search engine optimization in a nutshell -
if you stick to the advice presented here, you will
be both safe and successful in all your search engine
positioning efforts.

- Promotion right from the start

The very best place to start thinking about promoting a
site is before the site is ever built. This gives you
the opportunity to use a few techniques that will
immediately give you a head start. This article is
working on the assumption that you have already done a
thorough key phrase analysis and chosen your main key
phrases to use for promotion. The choice of title and
domain that you make for your site can have a
significant impact on the future promotional prospects.

You will find that some compromise may be necessary
between the title and domain name, since it is
increasingly difficult to find a workable domain name
that contains any key phrases.

The rest of this article discusses how you can gain some
ground in the search engines and directories, simply
through a wise choice of title and domain name.

- Choosing a title

Although you may be tempted to use your company name in
your web site title, it is generally best to avoid this
if possible for smaller businesses. It will be different
if you are a well known company with a strong brand, but
for most people, their company will not be widely known.
For non-corporate sites, you have the advantage of not
being restricted in any way; your site title can become
whatever takes your fancy.

Once you have done your key phrase analysis to start
with, you will probably have a good idea of which
particular key phrase you would most like to use for the
promotion. Try to use this as an integral part of the
title if at all possible. For example, if you are
selling traffic cones, and your primary key phrase is
"cheap traffic cones", then why not call your site
"Cheap Traffic Cones.com"? The dotcom frenzy has kindly
left this type of title as acceptable to the public.

Remember that this advice is given from a search engine
optimization point of view, and not a marketing/branding
one. A further compromise that you may need to make is
one with the marketing aspects - the need to use a
memorable domain name and title.

- Aiming for the directory listings

Choosing a title with your main key phrase in it is one
thing, but when it comes to getting listed in the
directories, you may need to go one step further. It is
important that the title of the site, and the domain
name used, closely match, so that the directory editors
do not feel like you are trying to trick them. For
instance, if your domain is "jonesandsons.com" and your
site title is "cheap traffic cones", and it is quite
obvious that your business name is "Jones and Sons",
then the editors will see this and list your site title
as "Jones and Sons", which is no use to you. So aim to
avoid this issue right from the start. Even if you
already own the domain jonesandsons.com, register
"cheaptrafficcones.com" and "cheap-traffic-cones.com".

Do not underestimate the importance of getting the Yahoo
listing right first time. Yahoo editors are quite happy
to reject sites, even if the paid-review process is
used.

- Aiming for placement in the directories

Quite surprisingly, both Yahoo and the Open Directory
Project list sites alphabetically within the category
listings, based on the title, as do Looksmart and the Go
Guides to some extent. Although most visitors use the
search facility, and thus only generally see the search
results, a substantial proportion use the category
listings themselves. It is therefore worth aiming for
placement at the top of these lists right from the
start.

The notable exception between the main two is that Yahoo
places sites using numbers right at the top of the list,
whereas the ODP (open Directory Project) uses the first
letter of a title. You can therefore decide to go all
out to get a higher Yahoo placement and use numbers:
"101 cheap traffic cones" -
< www.101-cheap-traffic-cones.com >

To get a little more technical, Yahoo actually orders
sites according to the ASCII character codes, thus
placing punctuation ahead of number, ahead of letters.
In highly competitive categories, you may even see sites
with titles like "!Add Me Promotion". In fact, if you
are looking for the ultimate name to top a category in
Yahoo, then use "! Aardvark" or something similar. The
combination of exclamation mark followed by a space
makes this virtually unbeatable. The downside is that
the title will be unusual at best, but is more likely to
be awful.

As before, don't forget that the site title and the URL
need to match fairly closely for the editors to be
convinced that this is a genuine title. Thus, if you use
an exclamation mark in yout title, this needs to become
a feature wherever your title appears on the pages.

So now we have three possible types of title and domain
name:
"! cheap traffic cones" -
< www.cheap-traffic-cones.com >
"101 cheap traffic cones" -
< www.101-cheap-traffic-cones.com >
"Amazing cheap traffic cones!" -
< www.amazing-cheap-traffic-cones.com >

The difference between the titles is that on Yahoo, the
first two titles would probably be listed at the top,
but would achieve only middling placement in the ODP. On
the other hand, the third title would do reasonably well
in both.

Of course, you could try and get the best of both worlds
by using "! Amazing cheap traffic cones", but as you can
see, it starts to look very unnatural. Choosing an
appropriate name has to be a compromise between a
workable title and an alphanumerically superior one.

As a general rule, try to aim for a title that begins at
least with the letter A. This will usually suffice to
get a site listed in the top few for any given category,
without looking too tacky.

- Do some research first

It is well worth doing some research into the categories
that your site is most likely to appear in, and look at
the competition for top spot. Remember that, at any
time, someone can invent a web site title that will top
your own, but you should be able to see the level of
title optimization that will be required for you to gain
that top spot, at least for the moment.

- Why register with and without hyphens?

The hyphenated version of a domain name is the more
search engine friendly of the two. Some engines can only
read hyphenated urls, and recognize the key phrases
within them, but will only see the un-hyphenated version
as a jumble of letters. Having key words within a domain
name may increase the relevancy "score" on some search
engines. Ideally your domain name will consist of, or
fully contain, your primary key phrase.

There are two reasons for registering the unhyphenated
version in addition. The first is because it is more
memorable, probably, and easier/faster to type for
repeat visitors. Someone guessing the URL is more likely
to type it in without using the hyphens. The second
reason is to protect your domain name. It is very easy
for other people to register domain names that are very
similar to your own, and set up similar or competing web
sites. So don't be afraid to register any similar
phrases necessary to protect your own. Although this is
not the ideal way for domain names to be used, there are
enough unscrupulous types out there to make this a
worthwhile investment.

- What if I can't get the title and domain to match?

If there simply aren't any suitable domains left, then
you will have to compromise. Try using just one of the
words form the key phrase in the domain instead - this
should open up a whole new range of possibilities; but
remember that you are trying to match the domain to the
title as closely as possible. Alternatively, you can aim
for a different key phrase - even if it is not your
first choice, there may still be another key phrase that
is almost as suitable.

- Don't use single letters and characters if possible

With regard to the tactics, mentioned above, of using
punctuation and numbers such as "A1 traffic cones" and
"!100% traffic cones" to get top placement in Yahoo and
the other directories; although this may work to some
extent, it generally looks very tacky, isn't memorable,
and may not convince the editors at all. The use of
numbers in the title is also generally ugly and
transparent. The aim is to come up with a title that is
usable in marketing terms as well. Therefore, unless it
is absolutely necessary, try and avoid such tactics. For
most categories, a simpler title will suffice.

- Should you settle for second place?

No, the difference between top spot and second place in
a category is considerable. Roughly speaking, the top
listed site can expect 30-50% more clicks from visitors
to the category than the second placed site.

- What about using .org or .net instead?

There will probably be many more domain names available
if you aim for a different TLD (Top Level Domain), such
as ".org", ".net", ".co.uk", ".cc" etc. The problem with
these is that they are not memorable. Internet users
automatically try the ".com" version of a name first.
Thus from a branding point of view, they can be a poor
choice. From a promotion aspect, this should allow you a
good choice of title and domain name.

- What will you gain from a key phrase heavy title and
domain name?

Actually having the key phrase in the domain name will
have only a very limited effect; the purpose of the
matching domain and title is so that they are convincing
to the directory editors. You are using the domain name
to suggest that your highly optimized title is genuine,
and not simply an attempt to get to the top of the
listings.

- Link Popularity

One additional plus, and this is quite important, is
increased link popularity. When other sites link to
yours, it is advantageous to have your primary key
phrase in the link text. Thus by having a key phrase as
your site title and domain name, you will automatically
have a key phrase in all links to your site. This
magnifies the effectiveness of each link to your site.

- Only use one domain

It is quite important that no matter how many domains
you have pointing to the same site, you should only use
one of them for advertising, submission, links etc. So
choose a single domain name, such as
< www.amazing-cheap-traffic-cones.com > and stick with
it. Use only this version (including the "www") for
all purposes. Otherwise you will be diluting the link
popularity of the domain, diluting the branding, and
possibly even spamming the engines by seemingly
submitting multiple sites with the same content.

This text may freely be republished or distributed in unmodified form provided the following resource box is included intact either at the beginning or the end of the article and a complimentary copy or notice (link) is sent to the author at the address specified below:

Ralph Tegtmeier is the co-founder and principal of fantomaster.com GmbH (Belgium), < http://fantomaster.com/ >, a company specializing in webmasters software development, industrial-strength cloaking and search engine positioning services.

He has been a web marketer since 1994 and is editor-in-chief of fantomNews, a free newsletter focusing on search engine optimization, available at: < http://fantomaster.com/fantomnews-sub.html > You can contact him at mailto:fneditor@fantomaster.com
(c) copyright 2002 by fantomaster.com
All rights reserved.
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