If you register a domain name that isn’t as effective as it could be, you’ll be kicking yourself when you see this simple distinction. It’ll save you tons of time, and aggravation. Nothing is worse than learning a valuable trick after you've spent a lot of your valuable time researching keywords and built backlink relationships.
One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of websites, or actually the urls (domain names) for those websites, have not taken advantage of the way they are viewed by search engines. It doesn't take a lot more effort to improve your rankings.
The trick is to use hyphens in the domain name of your website. That way, for example, the url for this website, http://www.internetdiscountshoppingmall.com becomes http://www.internet-discount-shopping-mall.com. The search engines may be smart enough to find http://www.internetdiscountshoppingmall.com on their own, but why leave it to chance. The hyphens break up the url into sensible words, not a just bunch of strung-together words.
I use a hyphenated url for all my online marketing, and use the un-hyphenated version for podcasting, business cards, and word-of-mouth advertising. While the hyphens improve my search engine rankings, with them, the url is a mouthful. It takes too long to say and too long to copy down.
Try this for your domain name. You may see a decent improvement in your search engine rankings. Google, Yahoo, AltaVista, HotBot, Ask.com and MSN may all put your name just that much higher in their rankings. Just try to do it before you get to deep into an already existing website. I unfortunately learned this technique too late, and spent hours re-configuring page after page to work with the hyphenated url. But I think it’s worth it.
For more expert advice, check out http://www.find-an-expert-online.com.
Frank Buddenbrock
Publisher
http://www.find-an-expert-online.com, Online Experts Directory
Los Angeles, CA
Bio-
Frank Buddenbrock is publisher of www.find-an-expert-online.com, the internet's #1 online directory of experts, specialists, professionals, consultants, coaches, instructors, and gurus.
His goal is to make his website the first place everyone goes to when they're seeking an answer to a question, looking for solutions to problems. He has put together a site with access to experts through a blog, calendar of events, articles directory, and links directory. Podcasts are coming shortly.
