The Domain name is very important as it is:
- used by the search engines as part of the ranking algorithm
- Seen by the searcher in the search and impacts their selection.
As a example if you did a search on Google for healthy food recipes and the first result had a domain name of:
www.foods.com
and the second result had a domain name of
www.healthyfoodrecipes.com
Which would you click on?
Your choice of domain name is relatively straightforward it is simply your primary keyword phrase or something very similar. So if the website is focused on healthy food recipes
then the first choice domain name would be.
www.healthyfoodrecipes.com
A quick check (April 2005) shows is as still being available. Assume that it wasn’t then you would look for permutations like:
- healthy-food-recipes.com
- healthy-food-guide
- healthy-food-recipe-guide
- healthyfoodrecipes
- healthyfoodrecipeguide
I would also consider using another top level domain extension other than the .com like .biz, .ws, .info, .net, .org in that order.
You should notice that I have not separated the individual words in the preferred domain name. The main search engines can currently correctly recognise them as three separate words, and hence there is not need to help them by using a delimiter like a dash (-) or an underscore(_).
That was not always the case; which is way you see many sites that use the dash (-) or underscore(_), including this one.
I only would use the delimiter if the other domain name was already taken and I would always use the dash (-).
Country Specific TLDs
If your niche is focused mainly for a local market especially in a non English language then I would advise you to use country specific TLDs like .de for Germany, .fr for France etc.
Only use a geographic TLD is you are definitely country specific. Search engines have started to give preference to UK sites for UK originating searches, and as they move to implement local search they could differentiate even more.
Using More than One Domain Name
In order to protect their name many companies register several Top level domain names e.g. the don’t just have .com they also register .net, .org, .co.uk etc.
For large corporations this is ok, but for small niche website owners then it is a bit of an over kill.
Registering a Domain Name
Although you don’t have to, you should always register your domain name with the same company that is going to do the website hosting.
This is especially true for beginners. So if company A is going to host the website then Company A is also the one you register the domain name with.
So don’t register the domain name until you have chosen
the hosting provider.
If you want to know more my other site has more detail
on domain names .
If you need some additional inspiration for a domain name then the tool at www.nameboy.com has an excellent domain search facility and will provide alternative name suggestions.
