How to choose a good domain name

[Gordon N]

To me this is a question on what you class as more important from seo effectiveness (helps you get found - your site has to convert the leads to sales) or brand awareness.

I personally think that you should use your business name wherever possible to push it to the forefront of peoples minds and build a brand. I would prefer to buy a training product from a company that comfortably puts it's proper name in the domain rather than a 'generic' domain. I like to deal with 'specific' businesses not 'generic' ones!

There are so many other places that can be used to increase pagerank that I gladly take the hit on the domain itself. Although I will point out that optimised directory and filenames do offer a little of the 'domain weight' through. To use the example above develop.com/training-in-edinburgh/eventname.html - this backed up with title and heading tags and some deep links from other sites will be just as productive as edinburghtraining.com (just my opinion).

Regards,

Gordon

[ScottJ]

Google has openly admitted that they give extra weight to the domain name as it is something they wish to reward.

[TomB]

I have to say i agree with Gordon,

i would much rather build the brand of my business name rather than having a keyword rich domain name.

I do think though there may be occasions where that is different though.

God can you imagine buying a domain for

[Kevin]

Adding a keyphrase in your domain will help slightly but if you sell many products which do you choose? i would way up the benifits but to honest having a keyphrase in your domain won't help that much, try and keep it short

[MarkSteven]

There's no question that keywords in domain names boosts search engine rankings.

If that's all you want to do, then go ahead and buy a keyword rich domain name.

If you have other business priorities, like building your brand, then relying on a keyword rich domain won't help, and can actually look pretty tacky.

For me its brand first - you need this to differentiate yourself in the SERPs anyway.

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Mark
Search Engine Optimisation UK and Internet Marketing UK | Collective ID SEO Edinburgh - Scotland - UK

[ScottJ]

Originally Posted by MarkSteven

There's no question that keywords in domain names boosts search engine rankings.

If that's all you want to do, then go ahead and buy a keyword rich domain name.

If you have other business priorities, like building your brand, then relying on a keyword rich domain won't help, and can actually look pretty tacky.

For me its brand first - you need this to differentiate yourself in the SERPs anyway.

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Mark
Search Engine Optimisation UK and Internet Marketing UK | Collective ID SEO Edinburgh - Scotland - UK

Who said you only need to have one website, I am seeing more and more brands also develop out generics that describe their products and services, it needn't be one or the other.

[MarkSteven]

Who said you only need to have one website, I am seeing more and more brands also develop out generics that describe their products and services, it needn't be one or the other.

That's true. Lots of people are doing it.

I don't like it though.

Basically it has the effect of amassing duplicate information (call it spam if you want to be rude) in an already crowded web.

I think its much more positive to create meaningful URLs such as

www.collectiveid.co.uk/web-development

..that link to specific landing pages (apologies for the shameless plug.) At least this way the product or service is still hanging off your brand, and you're not polluting the web with duplicate information.