This is a question we get a lot when a business needs to register a domain name for their business or website. You may be selling, blogging, marketing , collecting leads, educating or whatever but every organisation or business needs a website.
One of the first things your business will need to consider when starting your website project is picking an appropriate domain name.
You will have heard about keywords and their importance. Basically a keyword is key word that describes your business or service. So if you are a baker well then the word “Baker” is a keyword to your business. Following on from that, if you have a bakery in Galway city then the keywords “Bakery in Galway City” would be a key phrase to your business. Google count or crawl these words when a search query is prompted from someone’s browser. You can find out more about keyword research on our blog page.
So back to finding that humdinger of a domain name for your business website. If you can keep it short that is always a plus. Long worded domain names are a trip to type and I have seen some really long ones like, bestbuildersnearme.ie or weddingplannersinIreland.com so you don’t want to do that. You also do not gain anything by putting your main keyword in the domain. There is no harm in it but do not let this dictate your domain name choice.
Here is what Googles webmaster analyst John Muellur has to say about using keywords in your top level domain.
“This is a really common question that comes up for the new top-level domains. In short, no. You don’t get a special bonus like that from having a keyword in your top-level domain. Anecdotally you can see that by searching naturally for anything that interests you. I’d venture a guess that the top results don’t have those keywords as a domain ending. Often it’s not even in the URL at all. That’s by design.”
So hopefully you can use your actual business name for your domain name. In many cases that would be the best approach. In Ireland if you want to use a domain name ending in .ie you must register the business name with the CRO in your own name. This is a requirement by the IEDR who are now called weare.ie. This is to ensure accountability for domain names ending in .ie that they are legitimate businesses.
So a better approach to SEO and Keyword optimisation would be to look at your virtual business wholistically. Content is king for Google and having relevant, up to date information about your product or service the way to get there. If you are a baker or bakery well then you need to be the authority on baking quality products for sale in your area. How to do that practically in terms of creating content is a challenge every business faces. Everyone is different but you have to be consistent and creative in how you become the authority for your niche. Organic ranking by merit may not be your choice of route to the ranking in the top three results for a given keyword as you may not have a copy writer ort may not have a budget to do this. In that case you can use PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising with Google Ad words. You can find out more about Pay Per Click Advertising services on our website. BUild good quality backlinks is also very important but more on that in a later post.
So to wrap it up, keep it simple when choosing the right domain name for your website. If you cannot use your business name go for something short that is easy to remember and more importantly easy to type.
