Setup Your Domain Name

Having a good domain name with a well constructed web site will increase the chances of your site being placed high by a search engine. A good placing on the search engine is like having a good location for your conventional business. With a good location (or placement), people will be able to find you easily and there is more traffic passing through your site. Without traffic, your site is doomed. You would also require less marketing effort and expense to bring traffic to your site as compared to say...a site without a good domain name.

What is a good domain name ?

A good domain name is a name which is keyword focused for your niche. (Shouldn't I used my company's name ? Yes, if your company's name is the keyword that people will use to search for your goods and services. Normally you have to be pretty famous for that. For example.. Coke or McDonalds, or Rolls Royce. Does your company name fit that criteria ?

Alternatively, register both names, a keyword focused name and your company's name. Then redirect your visitors from your company's name to your keyword focused site. This is all done by the registrar and is transparent to the visitor. In that way you can advertise your company's name in your business card instead of a keyword domain name)

So what is a keyword anyway ?

A keyword is a word or a phrase that is popularly used to look for the types of goods or services that you offer. These words or phrases are used most often by net citizens in search engines to locate your type of goods or service.

To find out what these phrases are, you may use the tools provided below. Just key in the type of goods or service you provide. For example, if you provide fashion design services. You can either key in "fashion" or "fashion design". The tools will also give you other popular, related words and phrases.

Tool # Overture

Tool # 2 : 7 search

Tool # 3 : Wordtracker (Click on Your Free Trial - has more stats & info)

These tools will give you the number of times the keywords were searched in the preceding month. As such it is an indication of the popularity of the words. Pick the top five or ten most popular keywords. Try to form a name with a combination of those words. Come up with about 10 or so possible names.

Now do a search in Yahoo for that category. First, observe the number of total pages available for that category. If the number of available pages is too high (say, a million pages), perhaps that category is too saturated. Perhaps you may want to consider to change concept, or perhaps narrow down to a more specific niche. Say, instead of musical instruments, try percussion.

Secondly, observe that a directory like Yahoo list their sites by symbols first, followed by numbers then followed by alphabets. So a site with a name like "1stop something.com" will rank higher than a site with the name "zillion.com". So if you want to list high on Yahoo (about 40+% of the searches on the net goes through Yahoo, which is powered by Google), it is better to start your name with a number or an "a" rather than a "y" or a "z".

Very important : When you submit your site to Yahoo, your site name and the registrant name you use to register the site, should be the same. Yahoo editors will physically go to your site to check the relevance and the registration information. You may want to check out the site below where Yahoo explains all this to you. http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest

Based on your list of possible names (after you have eliminated those from the saturated categories and have arranged them in Yahoo's preference), do a search to see if the name is available. You may use the tool at Icann Shop for name search.

Name search tool : Icann Shop

Now try to do a search and if you get a good name, register it right away. If you don't, someone else may beat you to it. First come first served.

There are more thorough and detail ways to select a good name and category. These are more complicated and involve the balance of demand (keywords searched) and supply (number of pages available, bid price at pay-per-click sites) to optimize profitability. It is not the intention of this site to dedicate 50 pages (yes, that thorough) to select a name. If you are truly serious in getting the best name in order to start on the best footing, I would recommend that you read Ken Evoy's Affiliate Masters book. Click here for a free download.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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