Check out this short video to see and hear the do’s and don’ts of website names. The video shows you how to choose the best website name for your site. The video takes a few seconds to load.
The transcript of the video is below.
Please share your views in the comments below…
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Hi everyone, how are you doing?
Andrew Rondeau here for webuildyourblog.com.
And today I just wanna show you a quick video on domain names coz giving the domain name right is crucial for your future website and your future blog and the success of that website or blog.
So, what is a domain name?
Well, simply it’s the name of the website.
So, in this particular case, the domain name is www.webuildyourblog.com.
It’s as simple as that.
But there are some do’s and don’ts around domain names.
And, the very first one is, come up with a domain name which says something about your website, says something about your blog because it is so confusing when someone says www.wecookforyou.com and it’s got nothing to do with cooking.
So, whatever you come up with, or whatever your website’s gonna be about, whatever your blog is gonna be about, make sure that the domain name signifies something which your blog covers.
So let’s, as an example, you’re gonna create a new website and it’s gonna give away some travel advice, it’s all about news, it’s all about tips and news and advice. So, you’re gonna want something like www.traveladvice.com.
Now, I can guarantee that that particular domain name won’t be available.
But, you want something like it or you want travel advice or travel news or travel tips within the domain name.
And some people put in hyphens within their domain names and that’s not a problem as long as they don’t add in too many.
So, in my particular case, we hyphen build hyphen your hyphen blog.com would have been a bit silly, would have been a bit stupid.
So, if you are gonna use hyphens keep it to a maximum of two.
And whatever you do, never put in two hyphens one after another.
So, don’t put in like travel hyphen hyphen advice.com. I know that sounds a silly thing for me to say but you’ll be surprised how many people do.
The search engines do not like a huge number of hyphens.
They do not like hyphens one after the other. Your website or blog domain name could actually get banned by the likes of google and yahoo. So don’t use hyphens if you can get away with it.
And if you can get hold of a .com, use .com. Other options are .org, .info, .net, .co.uk obviously if you are in the UK or .eu if you are in the eu.
So wherever you are mostly you can use the local domain suffix.
But if you can try and get the .com because that’s what most visitors, that’s what most people expect the domain name to be called.
By the way, .info is growing like mad at the moment so lots of people are picking up those .info domain names.
So that might be one that you want to think about if .com isn’t available.
So, as I said go for your domain name which has something to do with your blog and try and use as few other words as possible.
So, if your, if you are good at offering travel advice, don’t use www.hereissomegreattraveladviceforyou.com.
Just use travel advice and whatever you can to go with travel advice.
So be specific as you can.
It helps with your search engine rankings, helps with people finding your site and things like that.
So, travel advice you might be able to get traveladvicenews.com or traveladvicetips.com or freetraveladvice.com. It’s a matter of looking to see what is available.
And what I tend to do is, I use, there’s a website called godaddy.com, and there you can register domain names with them, you can do hosting with them and so on and so forth.
I’ll click on to this site from my site, webuildyourblog.com. You will see that godaddy comes up and then I’m gonna go to their homepage and then what you can then do, you can then put in your first thought of a travel, of a domain name.
So here, I’m gonna put in traveladvice and then go and search to see whether or not that’s available.
Now, I can guarantee that that won’t be available, but I just wanna show you how it tells you.
So, here we are, traveladvice.com is already taken, therefore it’s not available. .co.uk is not available, .net is not available, .info is not available, .org is not available.
So you then have to try an alternative.
So you might wanna try travel-advice, with a hyphen in the middle.
Let’s see what it says this time. So, again it’s already taken. .co.uk, again, .net, .info, .org, they’re all gone. Therefore, the hyphen’s no use in that particular domain name.
But you might be able to have traveladvicenews.com. I put in the .com but you don’t have to.
Let’s see what happens there as a matter of trial and error and see what’s available. So, traveladvicenews.com, oh it’s up there?, traveladvicenews.com is available. .co.uk, .net, .info, .org.
They’re all available for traveladvicenews.com.
So, that’s quite a good domain name there.
And the other thing you can do if I didn’t want traveladvicenews.com is you can go into this area here called smart search. What smart search enables you to do is it gives you alternatives to what you’ve put in.
So, I’ve put in traveladvicenews and then I’m gonna say yes get me coms, .infos, .net, .orgs.
Allow the website to put in popular prefixes, popular suffixes and I will put in dashes as well.
Put in a search and then it will come back and say, these are the sort of things which are available for you. So traveladvicenews.com, .info, .net, .org., what is available. So we got here tripadvicenews.com, vacationadvicenews.com, traveldirectionnews.com, let’s see what else. Easytripadvicenews.com, tripadviceinfo.net.
So that’s the sort of thing you can do with godaddy and get domain name which represents what your blog, what your website is gonna be on. And now there’s one other site which I often use and that’s, let’s spell it right, www.nameboy.com and what nameboy.com does is very similar to what I have just showed you on the smart search on godaddy.
But it just allows you to put in travel as your primary word and you might say news as your secondary word. Tells me if I can allow, if it wants me to allow hyphens or not. Click on the go nameboy go button and what it would do is give you some options or names, domain names which are available.
So, if we scroll down. So you can have newstravel, so you sort them around, Instead os saying travelnews, it’s newstravel. You can have newstravel.net, .org, .info. Mostly it comes up with a pair or doubles, they put the L in. So there’s travel with double L news and as you see all are available.
So it looks all alternatives for you. Travelinfo.org, .info available, travel-info I should say.
What else do we have?
And it expands it as well, so traveller, travelled.
So it says page 1 of 6. So there’s lots of different alternatives to what’s available.
Scroll down, I tend to forget to scroll down. This thing is gonna come up here but scroll down you’ll see them. Travelupdates.com, .net, again, hyphen.
And if you did it, if you did the same search. If I click here and say new search travelnews without the hyphen.
It will then give you the ones where there was no hyphens within the domain name. now, if you can get away with no hyphens, then that’s great.
So newstravel, without the hyphen, travelsinfo, travellednews, travellernews. So this is travelledinfo, travelupdate, travelupdate.info is available according to this.
Again, there’s 5 pages of this. You can look through and see what ones would be appropriate for your blog, for your domain.
So that’s it.
The domain name is what you’re gonna call your blog, what you’re gonna call your website.
You want your primary key phrase within that name.
So if you wanna talk about traveling, you wanna put travelling there in that domain name. You wanna minimize the number of hyphens you use to or you wanna maximize the number of hyphens you use to only two.
And you can use words like free.
So, freetravelnews, freecookingrecipes, that sort of thing.
Always aim for .com, if you ah, if you can get the .com but don’t be too, don’t be worried if you can’t because the .info is good, .net is good, .org is good or in your local country is okay as well.
If that’s the visitors or the customers you’re attracting. So, and that’s it,so good luck, if you need any help just write your comment contact me and contact me on my website here.
Please tell me in the comments, tell me what your views are, share your experiences and good luck.
I’m Andrew Rondeau and I’m from webuildyourblog.com.
All the best!
See you soon.
Bye!
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What do you think of including “the” within a domain name. How do you know when this is appropriate? For instance, “thejournal.com” is a site, which uses the word “the” in the domain. But when is it a bad idea? Does the word “the” mess up SEO or cause other issues? Thanks. I wonder about this one a lot.
Twitter: andrewrondeau
Gina
Using the word, ‘the’ is fine if is dounds natural and no it won’t mess up the seo side.
Andrew
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Although this is what everyone tells us, I do wonder if it is the most important thing to worry about. It does depend on whether you are more interested in creating a memorable brand-name than SEO. Companies like Google, Amazon, Bing, Yahoo, Adobe, YouTube, Facebook, eBay, Twitter, none of the big names use keyworded domain names, so maybe there is an argument that creating a brand is more important than relying solely on search. Of cause, you need to be doing something pretty unique and special, as well…
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Well I guess I did what a lot of people do…look at Google Keyword Tool and then assess the adsense.
Eric Bloom
Please ignore the hyphens while it not strongly recommended.
Mostly people use it to separate the keywords. But no one will remember the hyphens when look for you.
Short, Simple, Descriptive and easy to remember will be the best.
The best way is that your business should reflect your website name, because then, you’ll business will be well-known and will progress…
Twitter: Yoursinfo
Thanks Andrew. I’m recommending .com the first for common website and after .org,.net because these re the best ranking ones
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This post will really help beginners like me.
I want to have a website but I dont know what will I name since they said the name should be the niche you are marketing..Is that really true? Are there other cheap hosting or web services you can share?.. Your response is highly appreciated.
Thanks
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