A Winning Domain Name

By Debra Gravelle
Posted Thursday, July 22, 2004

The domain name is one of the most important decisions you will make when trying to win over the search engine dilemma. Try using at least one of your best keywords within your domain name.

The search engine and the directories give higher preference when your domain name is relevant to your site content or theme.

Let me give you an example of three different ways you could look at your domain name and how the major search engines will view them for indexing.

(www.trafficnmore.com)

(www.trafficNmore.com)

(www.traffic-N-more.com)

Which one would you have chosen?

(www.trafficNmore.com), Right!

The search engines may not necessarily see it that way.

Even though trafficNmore.com is easily understood by the eye of the visitor, the search engine will not see the difference between trafficnmore.com and trafficNmore.com.

Both are good ranking for a site dealing with traffic issues.Even though you have the approval of your visitor looking for your information, you could get a higher ranking with the search engines by using (www.traffic-N-more.com) and still keep the eye appeal for your visitor.

Here is why.

The hyphen breaks up a longer domain name to reveal the major keywords that describe your website content or theme. This makes it easier for the visitor to understand and most importantly allows the search engine to detect your keyword for indexing right off the bat. Cool, huh?

Moral of the story, give your visitor a break, be nice to the search engines and they'll be nice to you and give you lots of reoccurring traffic for free.

About The Author
Debra Gravelle has been a business consultant and planner for 22 years.