Choosing The Right Domain Name
Quite often it comes down to a choice between a brand related domain or keyword rich domain – which should you go for?
This is a very common question and there is no one-size-fits-all answer because as well as being memorable you must consider the affect it will have in the search engine results pages (SERP’s). What you need to do is weigh up the pros and cons of each and make a well informed decision in accordance with your business plan or online marketing plan.
A great deal of consideration should be given to selecting the domain name for your new website as this can be critical to its success.
Branded domains, if chosen wisely, can make you stand out from the crowd. Try not to be too clever as misspellings can provide an opportunity for competitors to steal your customers. In the long term a good link building campaign aligned with well written copy will enable Google to relate your brand with a particular topic or theme and this can itself in turn strengthen your brand. This approach will take time and effort but the rewards will be substantial.
Keyword rich domains can bring quicker success as they help search engines to understand the theme and topic of a site straight away and even give artificially high rankings for searches containing the term contained within the domain. Care should be taken though not to choose too narrow a keyword focus for short term gain as this will hamper your long term success - good keyword research will make sure that you get your selection right.
Even then, depending on your industry, keyword focussed domains are getting harder to obtain as more and more are already registered. If you find yourself in this situation it could be that a hybrid solution – using part brand, part keyword in the domain name – is the only option. This can work well but make sure that your domain doesn’t become too length and is readable as this can make it difficult for humans to remember.
Now you think you know the preferred domain should you go for .co.uk or .com. You will be glad to hear that the answer to which top level domain to go for is much simpler!
If you intend to specifically target one country e.g. UK then using that countries extension as it will be looked upon favourably in the local version of the search engine but may hold you back on their international versions (e.g. Google.co.uk v Google.com). If you have international ambitions then you should go for a .com domain as this is considered geographically neutral across all SE versions.
Whichever domain name you decide to go for make sure that you add great unique content and link, link, link!
There are currently no comments on this post - be the first to comment using the form below.