Domain names are your business identity over internet. It should be short, relevant to your business theme and easy to remember. Finding such domain names has become very difficult because some hundreds and thousands or even millions of domains are being registered every day but it’s not impossible. You can get an attractive and relevant domain by doing some research.

Before you decide to select a name for your online identity, you should do some keyword research (especially when you intend to sell something online). Use Google keyword tool to research your business keywords. Find out what people are searching for and how they use different words to find there required product. This little practice of keyword research will not only help you decide a good, relevant and SEO friendly domain name but you’ll also know what exact keywords you should target in your SEO and advertising campaigns latter on.

Keyword Based Domain

The domains that comprises of a set of keywords are termed as keyword based domains. Once you have selected a set of keywords that you are going to use in SEO and other website promotional activities, try a combination of two most relevant keywords as your domain name. Now, a question that might have come to your mind would be why to try a combination of two keywords? Why not to try one single keyword to find a domain name? There are two reasons for this; one is its very unlikely that you would find a single keyword domain. As I mentioned earlier, thousands of domains are being registered every day and it’s simply near to impossible that you would find a single keyword domain name available for registration.

The second reason is an SEO practice. People who are searching for a product or a service to buy will always use a phrase or at least two or three words search string. For example, if you want to buy a domain name, your search query would be, ‘buy domains’ or ‘cheap domain names’ etc. You will never type the keyword ‘domain’ as your search string when you want to buy one but if you are performing searches to know the meaning of this word or you are doing some kind of research over domains, you might search for this single word and people who are researching are not your target market rather those who are searching to buy. So, always try a combination of keywords as your domain name.

Another question that you can raise is why to use keywords in domain name? Again, it is a good SEO practice. One of some hundreds of search engine ranking factors is keyword in URLs. If your domain name consists of a keyword, search engines will consider your website relevant to the topic of searched keyword and the chances of your website, being ranked higher, increase tremendously.

Domain Name Extensions

Selecting which extension you should go for depends largely over availability and your target market. The most common domain extensions are.COM and.NET. You should only shift to a specific country domain extension (ccTLD, Country Code Top Level Domain) if both of these extensions are not available and the.COM &.NET domains are not functional. For example, if your selected set of keywords is ‘buy cheap domains’ and the.COM &.NET extensions are just taken, there is no operational website over them, only then you should move on to the ccTLD. If any of these two top level domain extensions are operation websites, then it would be very hard for you to compete with the same business name, even if you get a ccTLD.

You should only shift to a country specific domain if your target market is from that very country only. Search engines, especially Google, ranks such websites higher in results but only if the search is being conducted from that country. For example, if you have selected a.CO.UK extension and your target market is also UK then your website will be ranked higher than websites with extensions other than.COM &.NET in the search result page of Google’s.CO.UK extension. On the other hand, your website might not even appear in search results if the search is being conducted over Google’s.COM.PK extension.

Similarly, if there is already a.COM or.NET extension website present on internet with the same name that you have selected in.CO.UK extension, your website will not be able to rank higher easily even in Google’s.CO.UK extension. It is because that.COM or.NET website is already there, is older than your website and caters the audience from all over the world. Remember, generic TLDs always rank higher than ccTLDs.

Be very careful in selection of ccTLDs for your website. My suggestion would be to search for a generic top level domain (.COM or.NET) to select for your website. Try different combinations of keywords or you can also use a hyphen (-) in domains. Although many people don’t like using hyphens but there is nothing wrong in using it. In fact, it’s better to get a keyword domain with hyphens rather than going for a ccTLD.

Domain name is your brand’s identity. Keep it short, easy to remember and a word or a combination of words that define your business. Understanding the search patterns of internet users will help you in placement and promotion of your online business. The little exercise of keyword research and right domain selection will benefit you a lot in future when you would be ready to market your products with SEO, social media and PPC.

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