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Your Domain Name

Although a domain name is not free - well, almost at $9.99 or so a year, it’s what you do with that domain that can help you in your search engine listings.

Although the jury is still out with a definitive answer as to whether or not your keyword or phrase in your domain makes a difference in your search engine rankings, I suggest that if you can use it, do.

You’ll want to get your keyword as close to the front of your domain as possible. Here’s an example. Let’s say our market is “lamps”. There’s probably no way whatsoever that you’ll be able to get the domain name “lamps.com” but, you could use different variations while still keeping that term in the forefront.

Consider variations like “lampsforsale.com” or “lampsforthehome.com” or even “lampsthatinspire”.

Choose something that is easy to remember and has a cadence to it. Something like “lampslightlife.com” or “lampslicketysplit.com”.

I want you to notice something here. First of all, all of the domains I suggested are all .com domains. Although you’ll hear varying suggestions on the use of .net and .org domain names, I highly suggest that you purchase a .com domain since nearly everyone will, by default, enter your website and then “.com”.

Ideally, purchase all three versions of your domain; the .com, .net and .org versions as well.

Another thing I want you to notice is that I did NOT hyphenate the domains. There are plenty of arguments online that say it doesn’t matter if you have a hyphenated domain name or not since you’ll be found in the search engines anyway. I completely disagree.

There will be times, especially when people get to know your website name pretty darn well and they’re not going to be heading to the search engines to find you. They’ll just type in your domain name to get to where you are. If you use hyphens in your name, you are guaranteed that someone, somewhere will screw up and put in your domain name without the hyphens thus ending up at your competitions website.

Just consider these two alternatives:
LampsLightLife.com OR Lamps-Light-Life.com. Which one would YOU as a site visitor remember to type in, especially if you’re busy?

Better be safe than sorry and stick with a domain without hyphens.

And while we’re on the subject of domain names, I suggest GoDaddy
for that registration…if you want to take it further and talk about hosting (because you need somewhere to put your website) I suggest HostGator by far.

So remember, GoDaddy
for the domain registration and HostGator for the web hosting.