“What kind of domain name should I pick for my business?”

Everyone is very concerned about SEO all of a sudden, right down to the rural grocer in my small village of 300[I lived in Mid-Missouri before moving to Naples, FL.]. I’ve had this question asked of me by a few people over the last couple days so I’m going to write about it and tell the future inquisitors to look at my blog :P.

For a business that plans a long run, my opinion is that you should get the shortest version of your business name available dot com. If your name is Rob Smith’s Plumbing, good luck… but, try for something like rsplumber or rs-plumb dot com. Dot co is pretty cool too and in my experience, dot co’s will do just as good in search as dot coms, as long as the site is well built.

Dont be afraid of the dash!

OK, yeah that’s easy, plumbing is a major keyword and it’s in the name of the business, what if there is no keyword in the business name? Don’t sweat it, go with the shortest, coolest version of your business name. Be confident in your content because that has to be what seperates you from the pack in the long run.

There is nothing wrong with using an out of place keyword in your domain name if you’re a business, but, if it isn’t relatively short and catchy, it just looks like you’re trying too hard. If you’re a locally focused business and can use some version of your location in the business name, that rocks… do it!

So how do the search engines use domain name in their calculations? That’s a good question and unless you work for that department in Google, there is no answer. They probably only have a statistical answer 🙂 …but popular belief has the page title more important in bing, and much more important in google.  I have noticed the domain name does seem to carry more weight in bing(and SEO results take longer in bing so don’t worry).

This website is sometimes on page one of “naples fl seo”, “web design seo” & “seo services pricing”, fairly contested phrases, and none of those words are in the domain name. – Stephen James Hall

edited 2/1/15