Choosing a domain name -- The 3 Strategies

Choosing a domain name is a very important step when creating a website because it can affect how your website does in the SERPS (search engine results pages), how easily people will remember your URL, and what people’s first impression will be of your site when they read your domain name. Fear not though! This should not intimidate you if you follow the basic guidelines I’ll talk about in this article.

Before I begin telling you how to go about properly choosing a domain name, it’s important for you to know that with almost all good hosts now you get a free domain name. I use BlueHost for hosting my websites so if you sign up with them you won’t need to pay for a domain name. However if you want to just register a domain name and not create a website yet, click here to go to GoDaddy to register a domain name because my readers get 30% off purchases of domain names.

With that said, there are three strategies to choosing a domain name:

Choosing a domain name with good keywords for your niche:

This first strategy is the one I used when I selected the domain name for this website. Basically, when you use this domain name strategy your main objective is to use 1, 2, or 3 good keywords from your website’s niche. The reason you do this is because this helps you in the search engines with the keywords that are in your domain name.

So for example, if you went out and bought the domain name BuyNewArrowHeads.com and created content on that website about buying new arrow heads…chances are you’ll rank high in the search engines when somebody types in “buy new arrow heads.” (*in fact—if you use the SEO strategies I teach you will almost certainly have the #1 spot for that search term in Google).

Let me caution you though to at least make your website’s domain name make sense. For example, I choose YouCreateWebsite.com because it helps me in the search engines when people type in topics related to creating websites and blogs. However, I didn’t go out and buy a domain name like CreateWebsiteSEOMakeMoney.com. There are two major things wrong with this domain name: it looks very spammy and it’s way too long.

Don’t ever choose a domain name with over three words. It’s just too long, too hard to remember, and people will be too lazy to type all those words in and won’t return to your website unless they have it bookmarked.

...So choosing a keyword rich domain name is a great strategy if you do affiliate marketing or create websites or blogs in specific niches and you want the SEO benefits of choosing a domain name like this.

Choosing a domain name with a new word you want to brand:

Think about domain names and company names like Kodak.com, Google.com, or Squidoo.com…what do all these domain names have in common? They didn’t mean much of anything until these companies created these words and then worked very hard to brand them.

The pros of creating a new word and branding it are:

1. The domain name is short and easy to type
2. The domain name is catchy and people remember it once it’s branded
3. You’re no longer just a website…you’re a brand

The cons of this strategy are:

1. It’s very hard to do and it sometimes takes a lot of money and time to brand a new word in people’s minds
2. It doesn’t help with SEO

Choosing your name as the domain name:

With this option you brand yourself as an expert in a particular niche. This strategy has some of the same pros and cons of branding a new word because once your name becomes associated with a niche…you are the expert! However, this can take a lot of work, it doesn’t help you with SEO, and it’s hard for you to branch out of that one niche because you are now typecast as an expert in just that one niche.

...So which method is your favorite? Have you used any of these strategies before? Comment below.

Also, check out this free report I wrote.