Comments on: How to Find the Perfect Name for Your Website Business

By: Salt Websites

Salt Websites — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 09:55:27 +0000

@Tevin Anderson – yes this would be better for SEO purposes if you’re interested in ranking for designer sunglasses more than sunglasses blast (which is, umm, a reasonable assumption).

I always fear hyphens because I worry that when my new product takes over the world half the people that want to go to my site forget the hyphen and then some guy that was sitting on designersunglasses.com doing nothing with it (no doubt just a page containing that standard stupid page with the chick with the white shirt and backpack and a few links in green) suddenly puts up his own sunglasses site and thrives off my mistyped traffic. That would be horrible.

By: Jacques Snyman

Jacques Snyman — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:54:30 +0000

The great domain name is definitely a key component towards assuring success. By itself it won’t do the trick though.

By: fordy

fordy — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 22:47:31 +0000

I’ve developed http://www.domainnamesoup.com to find available domain names. I hope you find it useful. Any comments would be appreciated.

By: Life is Colourful

Life is Colourful — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 14:06:57 +0000

Well, I really don’t agree with it 100%. Look at my website’s name and the topic. Still, I get good enough search engine ranking and traffic for my post pages.

By: Gyutae Park

Gyutae Park — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 07:09:23 +0000

@Tevin Anderson
Good points you bring up. However, it’s always a balance of SEO and branding. Of course if a domain name like ring-tones.com was available, I’d definitely bite on it even though the branding potential is low. The advantages of SEO far outweigh the “general rules of thumb”. However, with so many .com domains unavailable these days, those kinds of situations are rare. In the end, it’s all about providing value for human users. Search engines merely strive to follow where they go.

@Nicholas James
Thanks, hope it helps.

@Alan Johnson
I’m not a big fan of hyphens as they make the site look spammy and are extremely difficult to brand.

By: Alan Johnson

Alan Johnson — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 04:42:48 +0000

Tevin, if you’re interested in branding, I would suggest going for a domain without a hyphen. Sure, from a SEO perspective, having keywords in your URL helps (but it’s not nearly as important as it used to be) so that, if SEO is your main focus and the version without a hyphen is taken then why not, you can consider registering such a domain.

Alan Johnson

By: Casting My Vote… | KrisKarkoski.com

Casting My Vote… | KrisKarkoski.com — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 04:07:20 +0000

[...] I haven’t gotten around to writing an article yet here’s some tips for choosing a domain [...]

By: Nicholas James

Nicholas James — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 07:21:40 +0000

Another excellent post There are some good points mentioned in here about finding your perfect domain too.

By: Tevin Anderson

Tevin Anderson — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 06:42:39 +0000

If you’re making a niche site, sole for the purpose of SEO keywords, is there a downside to using a hyphen?

In your hypothetical, lets say I were trying to rank for “Designer Sunglasses”. And let’s assume that designersunglasses.com is not avialable but designer-sunglasses.com is.

Wouldn’t registering the latter be better for SEO than sunglassesblast.com?

I am not an SEO but am looking into building a network of keyword targeted niche blogs. And I have several hyphenated names in mind.

Now I understand from a type-in perspective you don’t want to use a hyphen for the same reason you don’t want a .info. Because people KNOW .com . And they don’t know to add hyphens.

-BUT-

If you’re strictly trying to rank for keywords, and this is your primary source of traffic, what’s the better option?

Thanks!

- Tevin

By: Gyutae Park

Gyutae Park — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 01:59:21 +0000

@David Hong
Well I wouldn’t say 25% but a good name definitely facilitates everything.

@Alan Johnson
There’s always going to be good ideas out there. It’s just a matter of finding them.

@David Chew
Yes, very important. You should get a new domain for yourself.