domain names tips

[Romema]

Hi all,

I have few basic questions about the importance of the domain name in relation to SEO.
I am not sure if this is the place to ask and if this is at all the kind of information people tend to share.
i am new to this stuff and before I buy some domains I will appreciate if you could let me in on what kind of domain names are better for SEO:

1. What is better- with or without dashes? (example: besthotels or best hotels)
2. Does the order matter? (ex: besthotels or hotelsbest).
3. What is the importance of .com verses .net verses .org verses the rest?
4. The shortness of the name? ex: hotels-best-hotels-best
5. Anything else?

Thank you for your help!

S

[Latic]

Basically its what ever suits you and your business but also how easy it'll be for your customers.

1. i'd say without a dash, u'd be supprised the amount of people that just type the name without dashes you'd lose a considerable chunk of people getting lost of the way to your site.

2. if you can keep it in 'prefect' english again people will type the way they talk

3. .com will be the first thing people think of when they go on the internet for a website the only expection here in england is .co.uk, i dont know whether .co.uk would be more widely used by 'non internet' people.

4. shorter the better. Again the less words you have the less time someone can go wrong with typing. www.hotels.com would be typed in alot more accurately than www.hotels-in-a-place-you-might-not-know.com etc!

5. you dont have to go down the boring old hotels.com route. If your willing to try and build a brand around your 'product' then you can choose any short domain you want. This will take time, money and effort though.

Hope thats it i'm sure others will add more/Correct me!!!

[sasquatch]

1. What is better- with or without dashes? (example: besthotels or best hotels)
2. Does the order matter? (ex: besthotels or hotelsbest).
3. What is the importance of .com verses .net verses .org verses the rest?
4. The shortness of the name? ex: hotels-best-hotels-best
5. Anything else?

S

1. DEFINITELY WITHOUT DASHES, especially in the U.S. because people are lazy to remember, and/or easily distracted by them.

2. Order matters in terms of the "ear". You will have to agree that BestHotels sounds much better and more easier and sensible then HotelsBest... Just to make sure, register both variations.

3. COM's are the KINGS! Net's are generally good to very good, to almost essential (when I say "almost essential", I mean it only in internet related services)

.ORG's are usually used by NON-PROFIT organizations. If you are not one of them, then forget them.

.US are still not used much, but probably they will in future. .INFO's are decent, especially internationally, and especially for travel related industries.

4. Generally, the shorter the better, although I tend to believe, the more meaningful the better. For me, TWO words maximum... three maybe (if it's real good) Four+, nah...

[Anthony Ng]

While I agree with most of the points in the replies so far, I guess Romema (hey, welcome aboard!) is asking for their relevance to SEO. So for instance, while it is doubtless that BestHotels is better than HotelsBest for the ears, how do they differentiate in e.g. the algorithm at Google?

[sasquatch]

how do they differentiate in e.g. the algorithm at Google?

I think they differentiate in the same way we differentiate, or at least they are striving to.

That's what artificial intelligence is all about.

[Romema]

I meant exactly what Nameslave wrote- I know shorter is nicer and .com is the cool thing but does anyone has a clue on how would it affect SEO?

[lilian]

If you want to sell domain, then the shorter the better.

But to SEO issues, long domain names that have keywords in them have an advantage for search engines robots.

See sites in my signature for more info.