A few SEO Criteria for choosing a domain name

Contrary to what Shakespeare said, “what’s in a name?”, in SEO community a name, a domain name, matters a lot. Ironically, many people who want their website to be in the front pages of the search engines are unaware of the importance of the domain name of their website. Which is why it is no surprise that SEO experts spend a lot of time convincing their clients why one domain name is better than others.

So why don’t your save yourself some time and find a domain name that is SEO friendly, before consulting an SEO expert? Here are a few tips that can help you in that.

• Age of the domain
If you are familiar with Google’s sandbox that filters every new website from reaching the front pages, you’d know that a new domain name will remain away from the visibility span of visitors at least for some time. This means that if the domain is older you have better chance of being ranked by the search engines.

• Exact keyword name
If your main keyword is “rent conference room”, no other domain name would be better than “rentconferenceroom.com”. If the domain name and your keyword are one and the same there are more chances for your site than a website with the same keyword but different domain name like rent-conference-room.com. And, if you cannot get exact keyword you could at least get a keyword-rich name like the hyphenated one given here. Something is better than nothing, after all.

• Domain names with .com
This is an oft repeated fact. Websites with .com names take a place ahead of the .net or .org or names with country codes. As .com is most popular and trusted by human visitors search engines follow the suit. They too prefer the .com domain names.

• Scope for branding
As Google is said to have updated its algorithm to give weight to brand names, we know that a domain name with a brandable name can take the website to the front. A brandable name would have just one or two words so that customers can remember it, type it easily and recommend it easily to others. This would mean a short name with one possible spelling that visitors can remember and relevant to the topic it deals with.

• Avoid slangs, number substitutions and technical jargons
Slangs are normally limited to a particular locality or place. Moreover, it is not as impressive as a real word. Similarly, replacing words like “for” and “to” with numerals “4” and “2” can be quite confusing and lead the visitors to wrong sites. Also, when you add jargons related to your website topic, though jargon names are easy to get, make sure they are common enough for all visitors to understand and remember.

The Web Clinic is armed with the latest search engine optimisation techniques and skilled, experienced SEO experts in organic search engine optimisation. Your website is safe in our hands, until and after the completion of its journey to the top.

Local search – None above Google

Imagine you want to buy a wedding gown, and shopping for that perfect gown has been your headache since the day you decided to get married. Let’s get over with the bad news first: nothing less than perfect would do as you don’t get married every day. Now the good news: you don’t have to walk around shop after shop searching for the gown you want. Because, that is what local online search is meant for. It brings before you all the latest designs and styles in wedding gowns in the shops in your locality without your keeping a step outside the house.

And this is not the case of wedding gowns alone. Be it real estate, herbal spas, health clubs or dental clinics, the importance of local search is in ascendance since some time. Of course, one of the main reasons for this that the users have grown smarter, using key phrases that include three or four words instead of just one or two. However, from the perspective of sales and conversion, local search has seen a tremendous growth compared to the traditional search. In fact, it has helped online marketing move to offline purchase so much that many businesses have found their business goal through their Internet marketing tactics more than anything else.

This takes us to our next point: which search engine helps in local search most? Or, let’s put it in a different way. Which search engine is preferred by searchers most? You’d have guessed by now: Google. A recent study of the popularity of search engines has shown that Google is the chosen one for more than 90% of users in most of the countries except a few like China and Russia.

Why is Google preferred to others by so many users? Well, the answer lies in the search engine itself, especially its new Jazz interface. When you search for say, “restaurant London”, along with the local search results you get another option “Nearby” that gives you refining options where you can add custom location or choose the location that Google provides. This lets you find a result at the exact place you want.

However, this is not the only support from Google. The Google local business search and Google Maps are not new to you. Google can pull links and information that are connected to a particular location and bring it before you along with its map. Creating your own account in the local business centre ensures that your website is placed in the search results when searched with the place name.

As the search activity is getting handier and easier with applications like mobile phones and ipads, day to day task searches are done more and more from these applications than a desktop and or even a laptop. To assure that your business and your website is listed on top in the local search results Google plays a critical role. In fact, with Google, the whole of the business world is just next door.

The Web Clinic is armed with the latest search engine optimisation techniques and skilled, experienced SEO experts in organic search engine optimisation. Your website is safe in our hands, until and after the completion of its journey to the top.