How to choose a good domain name

[Scottish Business Owner]

Just wandering what the seo and internet marketing folks think about choosing a domain name.

Is it better to choose a domain name based on your company name or is it better to choose one based on the products or services you sell?

In terms of keyword rich domains does a comma in between each word count against you?

 

[Idea15]

Well, you don't buy a rainforest when you visit Amazon...

 

[Scottish Business Owner]

OK so say you have a training company based in Edinburgh called something really obscure like Develop (i'm making this up!) and you register the domain name develop.co.uk. From an internet perspective no one know who you are. If you went and registered edinburghtraining.co.uk that would seem much better to me in terms of people searching. It's fine people googling your name but they have to have heard of it first to do that.

Isn't their weight behind keyword rich domains? It's late and i'm probably talking a load of nonsense but i'm wandering whether people really are getting their domain names right

 

[findnetworkingevents]

I would say there is weight behind keyword rich domains, works for me!

Stuart

 

[TomB]

I'm not sure though if people want to find you they will find you.

My domain is clearbluedesigns.co.uk

I'm trying to optmise my front page for web design edinburgh, so I put that term in to my page title, write it into my content and when other websites link to my i put that phrase in the title tag of the a href tag.

and people still find me even though there is nothing to do with web design edinburgh in my domain name.

I guess really good seo (not saying mine is) could be as good as or better than a keyword rich domain name . . .

I can think of any example of keyword rich domains, i mean like heather said you don't buy rainforests at amazon, or go looking for small woods at littlewoods. But there are both big enough brands that you know them by name.

People might not know my wee empire by name and come across it as web design

Can anyone think of a keyword rich domain?

 

[Scottish Business Owner]

Stuart's site is probably a good example of my point. It's a keyword rich domain that probably works better for him. Tom makes a good point about SEO and I would think good seo is always a factor in getting a good ranking.

What if Tom and another site both optimised exactly the same and everything else was equal but the other site was called edinburghweddesign.co.uk, surely the keyword rich domain would mean it would rank higher?

 

[ScottJ]

Keyword domain carries weight and instant authority, I remember hearing the story about Whisky.com, at a trade fair when introduced to other companies who had been in business for decades they were introduced as the guys from Whisky.com (and had business cards) = instant respect and networking opportunities even though they had little experience at the time.

I think it opens doors and has a great advantage for SEO/rankings and of course the radio test/ being memorable.

If I had a van and on the side of it was signwriting saying TVs.co.uk you'd pretty much know what my business was all about.
In the past companies have spent millions branding an otherwise meaningless name, today you can spend thousands and instantly associate your business with a product by buying the prime generic.

These companies get it!

 

[Mark]

Just to add another couple to that list Scott linked: wellbeing.com is owned by boots, house.co.uk is owned by British Gas.

Keyword domains can carry natural traffic with them. People have a habit of typing straight into the browser's address bar what they are looking for genericwords.co.uk. Essentially free advertising if you will. However, most of the companies i've seen using them (like those mentioned above) actually redirect to the company's branded website rather than make a business based off the name.

You can also get an idea of how popular specific keywords/combinations are using googles keyword tool:
https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal

The comment on Amazon above is partially true, it isn't a word directly associated with e-commerce. But I'm pretty sure the name was coined off the original business plan, an analogy between the number of products they will sell and the number of species of life in the amazon. But single dictionary words like amazon have the advantage, people tend to be able to spell them correctly first time.

Also, if you plan on advertising the domain name, using hyphens between generic-words can mean you miss out of potential traffic. If say you do a radio advertisement, people may assume that there are no hyphens and simply type genericwords versus the real generic-words domain that you registered.

 

[Power Lunch Club]

The two that spring to mind for me are christmas.co.uk which take you to a web site run by a company called Father Christmas Limited

and the other is Christmas.com which takes you to a holding page. Incidentally I saw this domain for sales a wee while ago. They were looking for offer over

 

[ScottJ]

christmas.co.uk used to be for sale for

 

[Gordon N]

To me this is a question on what you class as more important from seo effectiveness (helps you get found - your site has to convert the leads to sales) or brand awareness.

I personally think that you should use your business name wherever possible to push it to the forefront of peoples minds and build a brand. I would prefer to buy a training product from a company that comfortably puts it's proper name in the domain rather than a 'generic' domain. I like to deal with 'specific' businesses not 'generic' ones!

There are so many other places that can be used to increase pagerank that I gladly take the hit on the domain itself. Although I will point out that optimised directory and filenames do offer a little of the 'domain weight' through. To use the example above develop.com/training-in-edinburgh/eventname.html - this backed up with title and heading tags and some deep links from other sites will be just as productive as edinburghtraining.com (just my opinion).

Regards,

Gordon

 

[ScottJ]

Google has openly admitted that they give extra weight to the domain name as it is something they wish to reward.

 

[TomB]

I have to say i agree with Gordon,

i would much rather build the brand of my business name rather than having a keyword rich domain name.

I do think though there may be occasions where that is different though.

God can you imagine buying a domain for

 

[Kevin]

Adding a keyphrase in your domain will help slightly but if you sell many products which do you choose? i would way up the benifits but to honest having a keyphrase in your domain won't help that much, try and keep it short

 

[MarkSteven]

There's no question that keywords in domain names boosts search engine rankings.

If that's all you want to do, then go ahead and buy a keyword rich domain name.

If you have other business priorities, like building your brand, then relying on a keyword rich domain won't help, and can actually look pretty tacky.

For me its brand first - you need this to differentiate yourself in the SERPs anyway.

----------------
Mark
Search Engine Optimisation UK and Internet Marketing UK | Collective ID SEO Edinburgh - Scotland - UK

 

[ScottJ]

There's no question that keywords in domain names boosts search engine rankings.

If that's all you want to do, then go ahead and buy a keyword rich domain name.

If you have other business priorities, like building your brand, then relying on a keyword rich domain won't help, and can actually look pretty tacky.

For me its brand first - you need this to differentiate yourself in the SERPs anyway.

----------------
Mark
Search Engine Optimisation UK and Internet Marketing UK | Collective ID SEO Edinburgh - Scotland - UK

Who said you only need to have one website, I am seeing more and more brands also develop out generics that describe their products and services, it needn't be one or the other.

 

[MarkSteven]

Who said you only need to have one website, I am seeing more and more brands also develop out generics that describe their products and services, it needn't be one or the other.

That's true. Lots of people are doing it.

I don't like it though.

Basically it has the effect of amassing duplicate information (call it spam if you want to be rude) in an already crowded web.

I think its much more positive to create meaningful URLs such as

www.collectiveid.co.uk/web-development

..that link to specific landing pages (apologies for the shameless plug.) At least this way the product or service is still hanging off your brand, and you're not polluting the web with duplicate information.