Choosing a Good Domain Name for Your Website

What is a domain name?

The domain name is the name for your website. It is the Internet equivalent of your mail or postal address.

Choosing a good domain name is one of the first items on the agenda when setting up your new website. Take great care with it. You cannot change it at any time in the future without a completely fresh start.

It should be easy to remember and it should include your main targeted keywords.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) or other types of website promotion.

You must decide at an early stage if the main thrust for promotion will be with SEO or another type of marketing.

If you hope to attract new clients to your website by being found on the search engines such as Google, the domain name should concentrate on the keywords that indicate the products or services you offer: Your name or brand name will be meaningless to people who have never heard of you. If you plan to promote your website mainly by advertising or networking there would be merit in having your brand name included.

There is a balance to be struck between the inclusion of your targeted keywords and ease of recall.

The question of including locality should be carefully considered. Targeting a large metropolis will make it difficult to achieve top positioning on the search engine results pages (SERPs). 'london-italian-restaurant' may seem attractive but the competition is high (HomePage PageRank keyword difficulty - HPR-KD 5.6) and top positioning on the SERPs is unlikely. Competition will also depend on the nature of the service or products at you are targeting. The competition for a dietician's website is likely to be less than for an Italian restaurant and a town with 200,000 people may be in range for top positioning whereas a small borough might be more appropriate for the Italian restaurant.

Three words, perhaps including your locality, are a reasonable maximum and aim for no more than 20 characters. The maximum permitted number of characters is 63. Letters, numbers and hyphens are permitted.

There is debate as to whether there should be hyphens between the words - 'london-tour-guides' or 'londontourguides'. In favour of the former is that it is easier for the search engines to index the keywords whereas in favour of the latter is that it is easier for clients to remember. The search engines provide no guidance and this is not an area that lends itself to research.

Domain Extensions.

The extension indicates the country of origin of the site, the nature of the site or both. Although '.com' suggests a commercial site it has become the most popular and often the first choice for many sites even if they are not commercial. Examples of other domain extensions indicating function are '.org' - non-commercial organisation '.gov' - government websites and '.edu' educational websites.

Every country has its own extension. Examples include '.co.uk' - for the UK, '.de' for Germany and '.jp' for Japan. Most extensions are available to all websites. Some extensions, however, are reserved for specific organisations. Examples are '.nhs.uk' and '.ac.uk'.

Two websites cannot have identical domain names. They can have similar names but with different extensions such as 'mywebsite.com' and 'mywebsite.org'.

Domain name registration.

When you register the domain, you are inserting an entry into the global directory of all the websites on the Internet.

At the time of registration, there is an option to show or hide your details. It is better to show them or potential clients might have concerns that you have something to hide. Make sure your information is kept up to date or you could lose control of your domain.

There is an annual fee for domain name retention. If you fall behind with the payment, the cost of renewal increases significantly. You should renew your registration with the 'registrar' company you used first time round. There are some seemingly official looking companies who may contact you early offering to renew the registration for you at a discounted rate. It is worth double checking their fees as they are usually the more expensive option.

Buying an old domain name.

You may find that the domain name you would like is owned by someone else. It may be in use currently on the web or possibly registered but not in use. Some companies have a facility to negotiate purchase of owned domain names on your behalf. For example, if you want a new website for a travel agency to South America - Amazon.com might be desirable, although this one might prove to be rather expensive.

There are some agencies that actively market currently unused domains. There is an incorrect belief that the age of a domain name has a major influence on positioning on SERPs. Whilst it is true that there is a tendency for older domains to have higher positioning there are confounding factors relating to backlinks. A new website has no links and a HomePage PageRank (HPR) of 0. If a website has good content, it will accumulate links and the HPR will increase. The HPR is the top factor in the Google algorithm. Older domains only rise up the SERPS when they have accumulated links. An old domain with no links will fare no better than a new website.

For those considering purchasing a 'pre-owned' domain name I have the following concerns.

1. The search engines will become aware of the change in ownership. They may discard links from their index made before that change. I know of website owners who purchased a domain name with an HPR4 only to find that within a few months it had fallen to 0.

2. It is possible that the previous owner indulged in unethical practice. You may inherit the repercussions.

New domain names

It is worth spending time researching your options and inventing a new name that will fulfil most of your ambitions. There are often gems to be found. A few months ago, I came across a new available '.com' that was too tempting for me to resist - '1onGoogle'. However, with an HPR-KD of 6.4 for '1 on Google', I know that my website will not hit the top SERP for such a competitive keyword even with the keyword in the domain name.

The main advantage of having your keyword in the domain name is that there is a reasonable chance that your keywords, such as 'health', '1onGoogle' or 'web design' will be included in the anchor text of links to your website. This has positive SEO implications.

It must be said that inclusion of keywords in domain names for SEO purposes has never been a major ranking factor. According to Matt Cutts, who regularly speaks on behalf of Google, its value has been further diminished in 2011. It can be argued that websites such as Google, Amazon and Facebook have done well with brand names as their domain names. These, however, are the exceptions to the rule that most of us must work with.

Finally, choose a domain name that you will feel comfortable with and that you will enjoy. It is like choosing the name for your baby. Let us hope that your website will be successful and you will be happy with your choice.

David Viniker MD FRCOG has 30 years experience with computer applications for medical education and he has applied the principles of evidence based practice to SEO: He is a doctor trained to practice evidence based medicine. David has published compelling and easily verifiable evidence that HomePage PageRank is the top factor in the Google positioning algorithm and that Google provides a boosting adjustment to HomePages that are competing for a keyword. He has developed a new, essential keyword tool - http://www.KeywordSEOPro.comwhich calculates keyword difficulty based on HomePage PageRank. Visit his website for further details.

His website http://www.firstwebsitedesign.com provides valuable information for beginners and intermediates in website design and search engine optimization.

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