There are a lot of factors involved if you are considering building out a site with search engine optimization in mind. Your domain name is just one, but an important one.

Domain Names and Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is simply an effort to get pages on your site to rank high in the natural or organic listings on various search engines with Google, Yahoo and MSN being the most important. Taking this approach to online marketing requires a lot of planning, patience and work. Unfortunately, many people get off on the wrong foot when the pick their domain name.

Selecting a domain name is often viewed as a simple process. Most businesses will simply use their offline business name or something off the top of their head. Others will try to pick something that is catchy, so visitors will hopefully remember the name and come back to buy more. If you are planning on pursuing search engine optimization, the approaches will not kill you. That being said, there is a better way to pick your domain.

One of the interesting things about most search engines is they put a significant amount of value on the words in the root of a domain name. By root, I mean the words between www and the dot com, net or whatever you are using. Simply put, even a moderate optimization effort will usually lead to the site appearing high under the phrase in the domain name. Given this fact, it is important to think long and hard about the domain you use.

One approach used by many people doing search engine optimization is to match keyword phrases and domains. The idea is to research keyword phrases being used by people in your particular field and then buy domains matching those phrases. For a simple example, consider the fact that many people search for 'puppy names'. If you want to build a site about puppies, you would ideally want to buy the domain puppynamesdotcom. Such a site could be optimized and obtain fairly high rankings with a moderate amount of effort.

Obviously, keyword phrases with tons of traffic have already been taken. This should not discourage you, however. Work your way down the phrases identified by whatever research tool you are using. You will be surprised to find that many of the phrases are available. Build a site on one of the domains and you should find your optimization efforts leading to successful results.