If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

So by now you have found your niche and done some research already (well, I hope so). Choosing the right domain for your online business is an important part that can help you get some better rankings and maybe even skip the whole Google sandbox theory. Here, I will discuss the different steps that you can follow to get you the best domain.

Finding the keyword with the most traffic
When you do your research you will most probably start off with finding the competitive keywords with the most traffic. Now, we will take a look at how you can find the best keyword with the most traffic by using Google’s keyword tool and then by running it through exact match to get the best results.

Sometimes you will get a keyword that you think is great, but by digging deeper in your research you will often be surprised at the ones you are leaving out. Look for keywords with your primary keyword but also have a look at the phrases with your keyword and secondary keyword in the phrase.

So this is what you do:
Take your keyword and put it in the Google’s keyword tool. Change the broad match to exact to get the most accurate results in what the public is typing into their browsers. Export these results and analyze them by the amount of traffic each of them gets. Obviously you are looking for a domain and so you will be looking for the keyword with the most traffic.

So now you have the keyword with the most search results, but chances are about 90% that this domain will already be taken.

Using NameBoy to get you domain ideas.
There is a tool out there that gives you lists of domain ideas by entering your keyword and then looking at all available domains out there that you may be interested in. This site is called nameboy. Head over to http://nameboy.com and you will see 2 form fields where you can put in your primary and secondary (optional) keyword. There is 2 checkboxes which you can click as well. The one is hyphens and the other is rhyme. I recommend leaving them out and will discuss the hyphens later in this post. Click on the button “go nameboy go!” and you will receive a list of all the available domain names that you may be interested in. This is a brilliant tool if you feel that your creativity is not good enough.

Hyphens
I recommend not using the hyphens in your domain name. It has been proven that domains without hyphens will rank better in search results than a domain without a hyphen. To give you and example: A year ago I was looking for a domain and then decided on getting one with a hyphen as the domain without the hyphen was already taken. It wasn’t a very competitive market so I thought; ranking on the first page would be easy as I had both my keywords in my domain. What I found after a month was that there was a site ranking on the first page that had the exact domain as my site, but without the hyphen. The best part was that this site didn’t even have any content on it. When you opened the site it said “This will soon be the home of the new domain http://keyword .co.za”.

If you feel that you absolutely must have a hyphen then don’t go for a domain with more that one hyphen. This can result in your domain looking spammy.

Using .com .net .org etc.
When you are searching for a domain then always try to take a domain that is a .com. When you can absolutely find nothing with the .com then .net will also be acceptable. I would not really recommend using .org and think that when you put a bit of time and creativity into it (and with the help of nameboy) you will still find an available domain out there that is a .com or a .net.

Depending on your target market you can also look at domains with an extension of your country, example .co.uk, .co.za etc. This if you are promoting a product, only to the UK market, I will then recommend using a .co.uk domain as Google will give you some credit for this and will know exactly who you are catering for.

Whatever you do, do not register a domain with two of the exact keywords after each other, for example www.keywordkeyword.com or www.keywordkeywordkeyword.com. This looks like spam and will probably be bad for your rankings!

If you find a great domain name and the other variations also exists. For example, if you find a domain www.keyword.com and the .net and .org are also availably, and then buy those domains as well. It is important to try and protect your brand. Competition is all around you and waiting for you to slip up. So be sure to protect yourself when it comes to your domains.