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Choose a domain name

The importance of proper domain name selection cannot be underestimated. And yet, deciding which is the ideal domain name for a particular site is far from straightforward.

On the one hand, SEOs insist upon the importance of choosing domain names with "relevant key terms." On the other, we have the obvious counter-examples of such lucrative institutions as Ebay, Yahoo and Amazon, whose domain name ostensibly has nothing whatsoever to do with the relevant product or service they offer.

In every situation, a proper balance must be sought between a name that is "search engine friendly" as well as "human friendly."

Arguments in favor of "key-term-only" domain names.

This school of thought represents one extreme in the realm of domain name selection. The idea here is that the vast majority of web users find websites using a search engine, not memorized urls such as "amazon" or "yahoo." There is a widely held understanding (though, like anything search engine related, such speculation remains regulated to the realm of theory) that of the many factors that search engines take into account when calculating results ranking, the domain name itself bears the most weight. Why might this be?

Well, one reason might be that a domain name is pretty hard to fake. In order to have a domain name, you actually have to purchase it. On the other hand, one can easily change the wording of a title tag (often considered the 2nd most important factor) to accomodate search phrases that are "hot" this month. Weighing a domain name highly helps protect against the ignoble though common pursuit (benefiting no one) of getting a site to rank highly for irrelevant or completely unrelated terms.

However, there is another, less understood reason why domains with key terms in the URL name rank higher than many of their counterparts. This reason is particularly relevant for Google, although other search engines are known to take similar factoring into account.

At of the time of this article's writing, any person entering the seemingly innocuous phrase "miserable failure" into Google would find the biography of current president George W. Bush (published on the official White House website, no less) returned as the #1 result. How could this be? After all, this phrase appears nowhere in the page itself. The title tags, header tags, content and even meta tags are conspicuously lacking this "key phrase." This manipulation of the search results occured quite intentionally, in a coordinated attempt in which hundreds of web site owners created links to Bush's biography page, using the term "miserable failure" in the link text. (i.e. miserable failure.) This example clearly illustrates the importance Google places upon inbound links (a.k.a. "external content") in calculating search engine rankings.

What does this have to do with domain names? Well, if the domain name of your website is "antique-china-porcelain-collectibles.com," then you can be pretty certain that the key terms you are targeting will appear in any link made to your site. On the other hand, if you want to choose something more clever, like "rarest treasures," you have no way of knowing whether links to your site will tell search engines (or even human users) anything about the actual content of your site.

Arguments in favor of a human friendly URL.

Many of the arguments in favor of a coherent, memorable or "catchy" url are obvious. In fact, this subject could easily be lumped into the much longer history of "branding." (Or, alternately, the very recent marketing concept of the "meme.") Search engines, after all, are built to assist users in navigating through a swamp of basically anonymous data. Make your company/URL name a household work, however, and you are no longer anonymous. These days, a user looking for reading material is more likely to enter "Amazon.com" into the URL field of the browser than to enter "books" into the form field of a search engine.

SEOs would rather ignore this fact. An information architect, on the other hand, is more commited to the findability of information than search engine technology. Although it is unlikely that one will find a URL as catching as Ebay, especially these days, its possibility should never be ruled out. Consequently, an information architect should be prepared to develop a strategy surrounding domain names that may not appeal to search engines, per se.

Choosing a domain name.

The first step, therefore, in any project undertaken by informationarchitech, is to work with you to decide upon a domain name given your available needs and resources. If you are wanting to get your existing site ranked for a niche term in the next two months, chances are you will need to stick to the domain name you have already chosen. If you have a good year or so to work with, we will help you register an optimal name given the findings of our market research. Finally, if you are in it for the long haul and want to promote a brand name on the internet, the next Amazon.com, we can help you transform such a dream into reality.