How to Register a Domain Name That Ranks!
What’s in a name? It turns out, a lot! Not only does your domain name convey your brand, it also can affect where your website appears in the search engine rankings.
So am I saying certain keywords rank better than others? Well, yes, sort of but not for reasons you may suspect.
First, let me explain a few things. Part of what search engines value in a website is the number of other websites that link to that site. The more links, the better. It’s kind of like a popularity contest (yeah, it exists in the cyber world, too). The thinking is, if the website is popular, then it’s probably one that adds value and has good content.
But let’s step back a few years. Remember in high school, some people were “popular” for some “not so good” reasons…you know, the kids your parents didn’t want you hanging out with because of their “reputation.” Well, it turns out that “reputation” is important in cyberspace, too…Link Reputation.
Link reputation has to do with the actual words that appear as the link, the words that you click on to follow the link; those are the words that give the link its “reputation.” So if you want your website to rank well for “dog training,” then you should try to have the keywords “dog training” in your domain name, such as “mydogtraining.com,” “dogtrainingnow.com,” “bestdogtraining.com,” etc.
Why do that? Does Google actually give you a positive bump when you have your keyword phrase in your domain name? Not exactly. You get the bump indirectly by taking advantage of how people commonly link to sites. In most cases, they will use your site name/domain name as the link text, such as My Dog Training Site. Or they’ll simply use the URL as the link, such as http://www.mydogtraining.com. In both cases the keyword phrase “dog training” is included, giving the link its reputation using the keywords you want to rank for. Make sense?
A couple other things you’ll want to consider. If you can get the “.com” domain name, grab it. That’s what most people will remember; “.org” is great for non-profits; and use “.net” if you can’t get the “.com” version. Also, minimize the hyphens in your domain name. One is fine (e.g., dog-training.com, dogtraining-online.com), but more than that begins to look spammy.
Just follow these three easy steps, and you’ll know how to register a domain name the will boost search engine rankings for your homebased business. But before registering that domain name, don’t miss checking out my money-saving tip for getting the best deals on domain names and hosting plans.
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