Bonus tip before I even start: don’t listen to “branding experts”, at least when it comes to domain names.
Millions of domain names are registered every day. All the short, punchy ones are gone, but that may be a blessing in disguise. The truth is, search engines like longer, more descriptive domain names. Keep these things in mind as you dream up that perfect domain name
1. Dot com is not as important as you think
If you think your domain name needs to end in .com, think again. Google doesn’t care in the slightest whether your domain name ends in .com or in .info. A well-organized website ending in .info will always win out over a poorly-organized site ending in .com. Exception: When most people will hear about your site through audio sources such as the radio or phone calls. If people need to remember your name and type it into the browser, they will almost always use .com even if they’re reminded otherwise.
2. Clever domain names are stupid
Throw out everything you’ve ever heard about branding when you choose your domain name, especially if you’re a local business or organization and you want your customers to find you on the web through search engines. Domain names figure enormously into how search engines make your site available. If you have a a carpet cleaning firm in the Seattle area and its name is, say, Floorology, consider very strongly getting a descriptive domain name instead. A domain name like CarpetCleaningSeattle.com will help people find your site when they search for local carpet cleaners. All things being equal, search engines tend to give more weight to the site named CarpetCleaningSeattle.com that Floorology.com or whatever when people search for carpet cleaning seattle or seattle carpet cleaning.
3. Hyphens in domain names are fine
Many search experts feel that hyphens are bad for search engine results because they look like spam. They are wrong. All else being equal, it is the content of the site that marks it as a spammy site. Others take a less dim view but say that hyphens help search engines extract the meaning of the words in the URL. Neither is true. The search engines decompose names like SeattleSEOMarketing into their component parts all day long with no problem. Hyphens in names, such as Seattle-SEO-Marketing, aren’t necessary to assist the search engines.
4. Domain names need not be short
Branding experts recommend that you get a short, punchy domain name. Um… sure. If you’re worrying about branding, you probably don’t need this guide. Short, punchy domain names are cool, but they’re also all taken. If you can afford one, you can probably afford a so-called branding expert! As we’ve already discussed, keywords in domain names are good. Hyphens are fine. Descriptive domains are better thant clever ones. So do you really want to spend $100,000 for the name www.kobo.com? Right. Stick to calling your site www.PacificNorthwestHomeownersInsurance.com, because you’re going to get a lot more searches for pacific northwest homeowners insurance than you are kobo.com.
5. Search engines think just like you, but more so
Here’s a gem: search engines don’t care about word order as much as you do. The search engines seem to separate the words of a domain name but at that point the order seems to matter less. You might think that boisecarpetcleaning.com is the only possible name for your website, but a search engine will be just as happy with carpetboisecleaning.com. It gets all your keywords in, making its search value much higher, and that domain name may well not be taken. Not optimal, but that approach could make a huge difference in the number of people who find your site on the web. Of course it won’t make for the most graceful business cards. But who uses business cards anymore?