Everything you wanted to know about domain names (Part 2 of 3).

In the second post of this three-part series answering domain name questions, my great mates at Netregistry shed light on three key questions small business owners are asking about domain names. Now here’s the next three:

4. Should a domain name have my keywords in it?

Preferably your domain name should have your keyword within for two reasons;

1. to help with SEO (search engine marketing)

2. helps people to remember your service/product

For example, flowerpower.com.au, you have an idea of their profession straight away. However, if your ideal domain name has already been registered and no longer available or your company/business name does not include your keywords do not despair. There are a number of other online marketing strategies that you can implement to promote your products/services clearly and that will help with SEO.

5. How long is too long?

Too long is when you, yourself is sick of saying it or writing it. You want your domain to be easily remembered and catchy, anything with more than 3 words may start to get harder to remember and write. At the top of your head think of the top 5 websites you visited, most likely they are short and catchy.

6. How much weight does Google give to your domain name when ranking?

Google factors in a number of items into search ranking and the domain name is only one of these factors. But how much does this affect search ranking results? Unfortunately the exact weight Google gives to domain names with keywords vs ones without is unknown and probably will never be known. In the past, there was a significant emphasis on having keyword domain names, however with new algorithm updates Google states that they are moving away from placing significant weight on keyword domains and more on site content instead. Having said that, doing a quick search within Google you can see that having a keyword domain is still very beneficial, coupling that with a good SEO strategy you would most likely dominate the search results.

Stay tuned for part 3 when we tackle more domain name questions including whether there’s a benefit or detriment to having dashes in domain names and do search engines penalise the domain that are not dot com or dot com au?