Domain Names... Setting The Record Straight

By Earl B. Hall

Search engine positioning is still a hot topic. Why? Because it can generate very targeted traffic, with a little effort, at almost zero costs.

As new people flock to the internet and search engines constantly change the rules, how is a person to keep up? Here is a new development that just might level the playing field for you, if you got stuck with one of those short non-descript domain names like xyz.com.

For the past couple of weeks many experts have been taking advantage of a change in Domain Name regulations that allows up to 67 characters in domain names. More than 3.4 million domain names, all limited to 26 characters, have been registered since 1993. The rules have changed again!

Why are longer domain names important and how does this affect me?

The reason you want keywords in the domain name is that many of the major search engines often give better positioning to, domains with keywords in them.

Don't like the domain names with a hyphen? Here's an interesting discovery. The hyphen seems to act as a delimiter, parsing each word separately and adding weight to your ranking. Example: cook-book-cooking-books.com

I did some searches and found that these long domain names are going fast, too. But, it's not too late!

John Audette's I-Search Discussion List, included a new post by the search engine expert, Webmaster T, who explained "Having a domain name with keywords in it is very important as it seems almost all engines are parsing URLs. Not only is the domain name important but also the directory and file names are definitely important." http://www.audettemedia.com/i-search

If you would like to do some research on these keyword stuffed domain names. You can perform searches and park your domain
name for free at http://www.abcHosting.net/whois1.htm Also, try their keyword generator to find other highly targeted keywords and phrases. It will also give you an idea of how often they are used in a search. A very valuable free tool.