By : Nidhi Gupta

What is Domain Name?

The domain name is a unique name of the website which is used to view a particular site. The name you type in the address bar of the Internet Browser such as Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator is called domain name. Basically each web site has unique IP address [a numerical digit] which is very difficult to remember; therefore it is replaced by a domain name to easily remember and found by people. For example domain name of our website is http://www.thewebmarketingblog.com. A domain name provides an online identity and a contact point for your business, organization, or service.

Selecting a most appropriate domain name for your web site is the very first step and imperative task towards building your presence in the internet market. In order to sell your product online or for online business, you need to build up your credibility. Having proper domain name is the first step in that process.

Web optimization is an essential element for every website to make your site popular across the world and attract natural traffic from search engines to generate business enquiries for expansion of your business. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) process starts by choosing a relevant domain name for your web site.

The Search engines’ spiders give importance to age of domain name; incoming links, web content, and the date when the domain was registered. The age of a domain name is an important factor for Google’s search engine algorithm. The age of a domain gives the appearance of longevity and therefore good chances of Top Ranking in Google. This is also one of the important reason that once you select appropriate domain name for your company you don’t need to change it for years and enjoy benefit of domain age for good listing in Search Results.

Things to be consider for selecting suitable Domain Name for SEO:

• Select name as per popularity of your company or products. Make a short list of keywords related to your company, business, service or profession. If your product or brand name is more popular than your company name than you should select domain related to your product or brand name.

• The domain name that matches your brand name is very important. The name that you use to advertise your product is the name that you will want for your domain, because that is the first thing that people will find for your company. It is also the easiest for visitors to remember.

• Keep the name related to the industry in which your company operates, it may also send the precise message across to your visitors.

• Find some popular keyword related to your business or industry. This will help your customers remember your domain name better. In addition search engines also give top ranking to those web sites which contain the keyword in the title related to site content. Therefore if your domain name and content are relevant to each other then your site can get good benefits using ethical Search engine optimization for organic listing.

• Try to avoid very long name of your website. It is advisable to not keep your domain name more than 67 character long. Give your first preference as .com for your site domain since most people are familiar with “.com”. No matter what you choose make sure it is short and easily recognizable. This is the name people will find you and you will be popular in the world of web. Preferably short, simple and catchy that easily memorable to visitors.

• In case if you cannot get the domain name of your choice then you should go for some other alternative such as .in or .co.in. There is also other way that you may try to buy the domain name from the current owner. You can get that information from “whois” for the domain, contact person listed and check whether he is interested in selling the domain. But this is a long process and if you can find some good alternate domain name than it is more advisable to buy a new domain name for your website.

• If you are unable to get short name of your choice and you have to go for long name than you must consider long domain names that have your site keywords to get an advantage in search engine listing. You can use combination of keywords and keyword phrases to generate search engine friendly as well as user friendly domain name.

• Selecting an appropriate domain Name with targeted Keywords and Keyword phrases has one more advantage; when a website links to you using your domain name as the anchor text, this link gives you more weight on the search engines for the Key phrase used in the link anchor text. Directories such as DMOZ, Yahoo often use the site’s name in their listing.

Search engines give top priority for the keyword occurring in domain name in Search Engine Result Pages (SERP).

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