Choosing the right domain?

outofcoffee

outofcoffee

New member
Jan 10, 2010
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Los Angeles, CA
I've been reading up on the effects of domain names on a site's ranking, and there's a lot of mixed answers for my questions.

I know that the most optimal choice for a domain is a .com/.org/net EMD.
However, the keyword I'm targeting has already been taken for all .com/.org/.net EMD. So I'm trying to decide what's the next best domain to pick for my site.

Firstly, do hyphened domain names work as well as non-hyphened ones? And does the arrangement of the hyphens matter? (e.g. how-to-lose-weight.com vs. howto-loseweight.com)

Since I cannot use a .com/.org/.net EMD, out of these:
-non-exact match .com
-hyphened exact match .com/.org/.net
-exact match .me/.co/etc
Which one would be the best bet?

Any advice would be appreciated.
 


When trying to think of domain names, one technique is to add an "i-" in front of the keyword. There are many great single-word keywords left for the price of adding i and a hyphen in front of the keyword.
The hyphen is read as a space by the search engines, so with i-webmaster I have a webmaster resource site with the keyword "webmaster" in it. There are TONS of great single keywords left if you just add the letter "i" and a hyphen in front of it.

There are those that will say a domain name with a hyphen isn't as good because it's harder to give the web address to others verbally.

Oh really? How hard is it to say "i dash webmaster" as compared to a much longer domain name? A longer domain name would also have a greater chance of being misspelled or a typo being made.

If I wouldn't have used a hyphen I would have had to go with a less desirable combination of words and keywords, which wouldn't be as strong with the search engines.

Besides, how often do you pass on web addresses to others verbally? If you're like me, it's not often. Most of the time when I share a website with someone I pass it on via email or instant messenger.

Let's be realistic—very little of your website traffic will come from someone verbally passing on your web address. The overwhelming majority of the traffic will come from search engines and links from other sites, especially if you learn search engine optimization and apply it to your website.

As more people catch on to the "i-" prefix strategy, it will become commonplace to see domains with this style name. There are plenty around, but they're not as well known yet because the majority of hyphened domain names were not started until after most single-word names and many non-hyphened two-word names were already taken.

Another tactic is simply to use the "i" without the hyphen. I'm not as big a fan of this for two reasons. One, not all search engines will separate the "i" from the rest of the domain to reward the site for having a keyword in the domain name. Secondly, some people may not get it either.
 
Hyphens dont work unless they are an EMD .COM
.COM, .NET, .BIZ, .ORG and .INFO are the only TLDs worth investing in if you want to work on SEO
ccTLDs will work only if you are targeting local countries.
Dont waste your time on anything else unless you are a Domainer that knows his shit.
 
Having an EMD with TLD is definitely gives you an extra edge over other sites.

But there are many other ways of achieving top rankings. So, I would advise you to go for branding with your domain.
 
people need to stop using 'tld' to refer to the .com/.net/.org troika exclusively. a top level domain in terms of dns is anything to the right of the last dot (not really, but it's hard to explain namespaces to people quickly), although .com/.net/.org were the first tlds used. the term 'cctld' is used as shorthand for country-specific tlds but does not have any technical meaning - a cctld is a tld. you might think i'm being pedantic, but it's incredibly hard to discuss things when you have to guess about what each technically clueless person thinks a term means.

-p
 
I agree the term muddies the waters. The domain strategy depends on the monetization strategy. What are you trying to do with the site?
 
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