Keywords in Domain Names – Are They Helpful in Branding or SEO?
By: Traian N.
Submitted: 2009-04-08 05:28:04 | Word Count: 562
To choose a domain may sound like an easy task but it can have a crucial influence on your website rankings and branding perception. In today’s internet market when everybody is internet savvy, the importance of keywords usage in the domain name can give your website the needed advantage over your competition. Nowadays, Internet is used for almost all kind of research, from products researching to getting health advice. Thereby entrepreneurs are becoming more conscious of bridging the gap between their targeted clientele.
Search engine algorithms are quite sensitive to what they can “read” about your website, and the domain name is one of those readable things. One of the first factors search engine will get to know about your web site is the website name itself, or technically speaking, the domain name (www.mydomain.com). On the other hand, the first thing people will look at when they land on your web site is the company logo. So, if you are selling used cars in Kentucky, one of the best domain names you can choose, for both search engines and your visitors will be www.usedcarskentucky.com .
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It is advisable to display a text logo on the upper left side of the page, which reads “used cars kentucky.com” accompanied by a small icon. This way, your most important keyword will be present on each and any of your site pages. Search engines will get the text they need, visitors will notice your business name (some basic branding). You can reinforce your keywords by repeating them in a nice tag line like: “selling used cars in Kentucky since 1966”.
You could get a domain name registered that matches your business needs so that you can tap in the desired clientele. Browsing through the web to find an affordable option of domain can be a good start. It is a good idea to register some variations of your domain name like www.usedcarkentucky.com or register the domain names with dashes used to separate words: www.used-cars-kentucky.com. Try to register the .net, .org and .biz version also. Once you secure the important domain names do a permanent (301) redirect to the main website.
It is not essential to choose a generic name for your website, because the web might be crowded with such domains. On the other hand, usage of certain brand or popular products in the domain name or page could also be an ideal approach. This does not necessarily means that the domain name has to be too complicated for the customer to remember or associate.
The domain name must be at least 2 characters long and not more than 63 characters maximum in length. The total length is excluding the top-level domain (.com, .net, etc). The characters in domain can include any combination of letters, numbers or hyphens but starting and ending of domain name should not be a hyphen. Importantly, domain names are not case-sensitive. In this manner, it would be short and easily recognizable. Nevertheless, some argue that longer the name of the URL the better chances it has of its rankings in the search engines.
Author Resource:-
Pitstop Media is a Vancouver based company, providing Internet marketing services. We offer SEO Vancouver services, PPC Services to companies of all sizes, from start-ups to corporations. Please contact us at http://www.pitstopmedia.com if you need assistance.
