What's the big fuss about long domain names?
By Alan Yap
The word is out. You can now register domain names of up to 67 characters. This is going to shoot your ranking way up on the search engines. Because if you stuff all your keywords into your domain name, search engines are simply going to love your site. Or so they say...
But is that really the truth?
No point speculating. Let's do a little test...
Go to your favorite search engine, say AltaVista. Key in your search term, say "website promotion." Look at the top 10 rankings, closely.
How many of these top rankings actually have the full term "website promotion" in their domains?
No hype, just facts.
Call me a natural sceptic if you want. When the news hit the town, with all the "Special Announcements" flying everywhere, urging people to "go grab a new allyou -can-stuff keyword rich domain name and emerge tops in search engine ranking," I was not at all moved. I believe this is too simplistic an approach to getting high search engine placements:
Besides keywords in domain names, search engines look at a few other factors for relevancy. In fact, this is what Don Dodge, AltaVista's Director of Engineering said: "Keywords in the domain name do not help much in ranking. We look at half a dozen factors in ranking. The words on the page, their frequency and position on the page, are still among the most important factors."
Search engines are constantly evolving. Once they find out that such keyword-stuffed domain names are content-poor sites with low relevance, they are going to come up with new rules to preclude such sites from getting the top spots.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not against registering for long domain names. I just feel that we should see things in perspective. If you're getting a long domain name in the hope of securing a high search engine placement, err... based on the facts, please don't expect miracles.
So what should we look for when choosing a domain name? I use a simple "3 Es" guide:
Easy To Remember Yahoo is certainly easier to remember than AltaVista. No surprise why Yahoo is doing a LOT better.
Easy To Spell If you have a long domain name, be careful. One spelling mistake by a potential visitor is all you need to lose him forever.
Easy To Pronounce If your domain name is hard to pronounce, how do you expect people to spread the word and tell others about it?
What do the 3 Es have in common? They make things simple for your visitors! Our world is complex enough. We don't need another complex domain.
Must your domain name be relevant to your site content? Not necessarily. What has the name "Yahoo" got to do with a search engine or a directory? And is there any real connection between the words "Amazon" and "books"?
Selecting a domain name is an extremely important step. So do it carefully.
Article by Alan Yap, founding editor of ProfitJump.com. Alan offers free tips and strategies for effective Internet marketing. Visit http://www.profitjump.com now or subscribe at mailto:subscribe@profitjump.com and receive a Mystery Gift, guaranteed.
| DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. |
More Domain Name Tips Articles
More By Developer Shed
 developerWorks - FREE Tools!
|
Rational Build Forge Express Edition is an automation framework that packages the latest enterprise-grade technologies into a reliable, flexible and robust configuration designed and priced specifically for small to midsize businesses. The new Rational Build Forge Express eKit provides you with valuable resources – including a case study, podcast, demo, and articles – to help you increase staff productivity, compress development cycles and deliver better software, fast.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) Express Edition offers outstanding online transaction processing (OLTP) database performance, while helping to simplify and automate many of the tasks associated with deploying databases for small business applications. IDS 11 further extends the ease of management and applications integration with the Admin API and Scheduler, high availability with Continuous Log Restore for backup server recovery in case of a primary server failure, and column level encryption to protect personal and company private data.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Manage, govern, and share services across your organization by using WebSphere Service Registry and Repository. Follow the hands-on exercises to learn how to navigate the Web interface to publish, find, reuse, and update services.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
As organizations integrate software into every aspect of business, they are constantly pressured to deliver faster, better, and cheaper results. Unfortunately, a “dis-integrated” software delivery approach reduces returns while increasing costs. This IBM Rational White Paper shows how Integrated Requirements Management aligns organizations around maximizing value and keeping pace with change.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Learn how to implement a build management system that uses and extends your existing automation technologies. This tutorial shows, step-by-step, how to install and configure IBM Rational Build Forge to manage builds for Jakarta Tomcat from source code.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Get a free trial download of the latest version of IBM Rational Tester for SOA Quality V7.0.1, a functional and regression testing tool that enables the creation, comprehension, modification and execution of testing GUI-less Web services.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Viper 2 brings a great value to developer communities including SQL, XML, PHP, Ruby, .NET and Java. You probably already know that DB2 Express-C is free for developers to develop, deploy and distribute. Viper 2 provides a variety of means that help move your application from the development stage to deployment more rapidly. This webcast shows how to best utilize the latest tools available for developing DB2 applications.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
The unprecedented scope of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) initiative brings to the forefront a number of management and governance issues that were sidestepped in the past. The key to a successful SOA implementation is managing and governing activities throughout the entire SOA delivery lifecycle by ensuring that services conform to the needs of all of the business’s stakeholders. Learn how service lifecycle management allows the business to ensure that the process by which services are defined, created, tested, deployed, optimized and retired is manageable, repeatable and auditable.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Visit IBM developerWorks to download a free trial of the Rational Host Access Transformation Services (HATS) Toolkit. The HATS toolkit provides a set of plug-ins for the IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform to help you easily extend your legacy applications. HATS makes your 3270 and 5250 applications available as HTML through the most popular Web browsers, while converting your host screens to a Web look and feel and it also enables you to develop new Web, portal, and rich-client applications.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
You can now evaluate IBM Rational Asset Manager V7.0 online without installing or configuring it on your own system! Rational Asset Manager helps create, modify, govern, find, and reuse any type of development assets, including SOA and systems development assets. Rational Asset Manager helps you reduce software development costs and improve quality by facilitating the reuse of all types of software development-related assets. Visit developerWorks to learn more about this product and register to explore its capabilities online.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
All FREE IBM® developerWorks Tools!
|
