What's in a name

[Russianwolf]

Okay guys, let's do some joint brain-storming that may help us all.

Let's just talk about what kind of names "work" for a website. And what doesn't work. You know what I mean, the difference between penisland.com (bad, don't go there) and pen-island.com (not a real site, but an obvious name)

I've been looking into SEO mentioned in the other thread.

Anyone want to kick around some ideas?

What are thoughts on hyphens in names, like I used in the one above? or underscores for that matter?

I just want to shoot ideas around about how to choose a site name that will help with the SEO results so we all might benefit.

Rule 1) try to have key words in the site name.
Rule 2) ?????

[crokett]

Pen-Island.com is still too close to the other one.

PenTurningIsland.com
TurnedPenMasterpieces.com

[twistsol]

Hyphens aren't bad, but can be hard to type for some people. From experience, underscores can get lost in the underlining that takes place when links are highlighted.

[radhak]

Best is to avoid all hyphens, underscores, or any other special character.

I'd go as far to say even avoid a numeric digit and stay purely among the 26 alphabets, but sometimes a number works good, and this forum is not the place to complain about a numeric in the name !

And always try and use the most prevalent spelling; preferably, choose a name that has unambiguous spelling; eg - PenCenter might be tempting, but there are those on this planet who'd type PenCentre and give up on your site!

The sole reason for my take is : ease of 'telling' others your website; easiest is to say 'please go to Pen Turning Island dot com, single-word, no spaces'.

And of course, short names are better, even if not exactly reflecting your purpose : after all, by now everybody know zappos is a shoe and other accesories site, but 'ShoeClothingHandbagsSunglasses dot com' may not have been as successful...

But finally - all that is a personal opinion; I ain't an expert, not even tried setting up any commercial website...YMMV.

[ironhat]

f you want to highlight the uniqueness of your craft...
Choicepens
Pensofbeauty
PensofDistinction

I chose to use 'Pens' in that latter two to help with search engine recognition. I'm sure that there are better ones. These just fell of my fingertips. Back to work.

[bmyers]

You cannot use an underscore in a domain name. You can use a hyphon.

Keywords in your domain name will score better in search engines. If your customer types "unique wooden pens" in to the google machine on the internets and your domain name is uniquewoodenpens.com then you'll score better than penisland.com, which is prolly taken already and X rated I imagine.


Bill

[Russianwolf]

Dan, get rid of that link, I don't want you getting in trouble.

I used the penisland vs pen-island just as an example of how a good intentioned site name could be tarnished. I'm actually not looking for a site name for a pen site. I'm off on a tangent, but that's neither here nor there.

are there any other factors that should be considered during site naming time other than.

1) key word in the site name
2) keep it short and simple
3) avoid words that when blended could be read differently (as above)
4) avoid special characters if possible

The site I have in mind, I'm not worried about direct traffic (typed in) but rather the search engine hits. If the person types in the words on the search, what will work to get maximum effect.

For example if we type in "unique wooden pen" as mentioned above. Which would the search engine prefer more, uniquewoodenpens.com or unique-wooden-pens.com? All other things being equal as I know that content will come into play also.

[pierhogunn]

I just removed the entire message...

[radhak]

For example if we type in "unique wooden pen" as mentioned above. Which would the search engine prefer more, uniquewoodenpens.com or unique-wooden-pens.com? All other things being equal as I know that content will come into play also.

Neither. The name of your webpage really does not have a very significant impact on search engines; iow, the key words within the page, the meta-tags might have a bigger say on how a search engine picks it up.

nowadays, google leads all search, and the way they do it is even more intrinsic : the more a page is linked to (referred on other pages, on blogs, emails, etc), the higher it shows up. and that's why i said you could even have a domain name that's totally unrelated and still be good on search lists - by using meta-tags and key words.

[Russianwolf]

I was under the impression that other than the "title" meta-tag, that the others were pretty much useless now as they are fairly universally ignored.

[bmyers]

I think your domain name is part of your pagerank as it pertains to keywords, google and SEO. I know if I google "russian wolf wood", your domain comes up at the top of the list. That's because the keywords are on your page, in your domain name and otherwise seems relavent to my search according to SEO formulas. Despite the fact that he may not have alot of back-links to his site.

When choosing a domain name, keywords for your target market is something to consider. It is not the only thing to consider for page rank though. Kontent is still King...

Bill

[poolhound]

Bill hit the nail on the head - Content is KING!

A URL that has relevance to your subject will help slightly in searches but the primary elements that help with SEO are:

1. Content
2. refreshing content regularly
3. Relevance of content
4. Types of content e.g. text, graphics, downloads, files, videos etc.
5. Backlinks - i.e. other sites that link to you
6. Did I mention Content???