Naming your domain is a tough but important choice. Don’t make a shot in the dark; make an informed decision! Put a smart keyword into your domain name so you can more easily rank highly on that keyword.
- Identify your top competitors
- Snoop out your competitors’ main keywords
- Make a comprehensive keyword list
- Find out which keywords are best
- Brainstorm good available domain names
- Rule out the bad names
- Pick a good name and register it
Step 1: Identify your top competitors
Now is the time to find out the target keywords for your web site.
Open up an Excel spreadsheet. By search or memory, find your future competitors’ web sites. Type those into the spreadsheet.
Step 2: Snoop out your competitors’ main keywords
One by one, put your competitors’ web sites into the SEOmoz term extractor tool. Print out the results - it’s OK to stop after the top 20 keywords.
Open up a new Excel spreadsheet. This can be a new worksheet in the same workbook, or a new spreadsheet file. Take the keywords from your printed results and put them all in a column.
Step 3: Make a comprehensive keyword list
Brainstorm off of those keywords. Add plural versions, singular versions, and different combinations of the same words. Take the multiple-word keywords and make single-term versions.
Now you will have a very messy spreadsheet filled with keywords. Clean it up by putting them all in one column and alphabetizing (click on the column heading and then do “Data” > “Sort”).
Step 4: Find out which keywords are the best
Open up Google Trends. This web site lets you put in 5 keywords into the box at a time, separated by commas. So go to it! 5 by 5, type them in. It’s important to note that the numbers returned with the graphs are given in comparison with the first term on the list. This means that you can’t compare the numbers on one chart with the numbers on the other; the numbers won’t match up.
In the second column of your spreadsheet, put the top 2 keywords from each set of 5 keywords. When that’s done, enter the keywords from column 2 into Google Trends, 5 by 5, and put the top 3 keywords into the third column. Repeat this until you’re down to 4 keywords. Print out this last Google Trends graph.
Step 5: Brainstorm good available domain names
Find out which domain names are available. Verio’s domain name tool is a good one to use.
Enter combinations of the top keywords into the domain name tool and see what’s available. If the one you’re really interested in is taken, you can check out who owns it from whois or just go to the web site.
Some of the domains that have been registered are clearly for sale. Available domains will run you about $10 a year, but domains for sale can cost you thousands of dollars. If you’re starting up a brand new web site, go the cheap route and pick an available domain name.
Don’t feel limited to only the top keywords. It’s OK to add in your last name, your first name, your city name, or a brand name you’d like to use. It’s also OK to add different forms the name, but you’re better off if the new form of the name contains the original name - like “schedules” or “scheduler” if “schedule” is a term you’re aiming at.
Step 6: Rule out the bad names
These are bad because they’re hard to say over the radio:
- domain-names-with-hyphens.com
- weerdlyspeldnames.com
If you’re looking at a name that’s really close to something that already exists, be careful; you’ll run into people who mix up the two sites.
You don’t want to register a domain name that you can’t register as a business with your state. Check your state’s trade name database to see if forms of your favorite names are already in use. Here is a link to the Utah business name checker. Also, check the US Trademark database.
Step 7: Pick a good name and register it
In the long run, you’ll be glad you registered your domain through your hosting provider. They’ll keep it on their nameservers and often times renew it for your automatically.
Don’t wait years to register your name; get it immediately. If you change your mind later, you’re only out $10.