If you think about the internet as a planet and the websites in it as places on that planet, then the domain name is the specific address assigned to that place, a bit like an address for a house. So ideally, what you call your place or your house should reflect what people could find when they arrive to visit you.

Many people have businesses with specific names that are not in any way related to their business and for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes, this can be doing more harm than good for visibility.

Personal names for personal blogs are the exception. When you create a personal brand then you need to let people know your name and you do this through marketing in various ways.

Let’s take my Dad’s business as an example. Although already in a competitive market (car leasing) and spending a fortune on pay per click advertising, it doesn’t help that when he set the company up a few years ago with his now ex partner they decided on the name “Hawk River Leasing”. Ok so it does have the essential term “leasing” in the domain but there are numerous things that can be leased so it is virtually impossible to have this domain name ranked for the actual purpose of the business. Particularly in a saturated market like this.

Had he chosen something like www.carleasingcontracthire.co.uk, he would stand a much better chance for ranking in the search engines.

So let’s go through the process more clearly so you can see why your domain name is crucial for helping with your SEO search engine rankings:

I’m going to use an example here for the purpose of this post to help you understand clearly.
You are in a business called Love and Light Enterprises, which through going on to google key words tool you find that this term is searched for over 100 times a day. If you set up a domain called www.yourloveandlightenterprisesmentor.com you have the whole keyphrase in your domain which Google sees as relvant to this and so you will begin to rank. Obviously there are other major factors like back links and articles to get you noticed but the first step is definitely in the domain.

Here are the do’s and don’t of domain names:

Do choose a domain name related to your Business or Service

Don’t choose something too long or too hard to spell. Rather than www.montgomeryandsonslimousineservices.com shorten it to www.mandsonlimoservice.com

Do choose .com as first choice unless you want to target a specific country like .co.uk and rank specifically for there. Go for .org and .net as next choices to help with rankings

Don’t got for any other . names like .info or .biz unless you are not using the site to rank or be seen in the search engines.

Do use the same keyword in your domain in your meta tags and on your site to help improve the rankings

Do buy your own name domain before someone else does!

Do use hyphens inbetween words like www.love-and-light-enterprises.com if the phrase without spaces has already been taken. This has no effect on the ranking so don’t be afraid to do this.

Anyway this is just basic stuff that most of you will know and some may not!

I hope this helps you .

Lots of Love,

Carly Taylor x