I’m sorry to all my readers because I was not able to follow-up my previous post right away. I’m busy with setting up an office, yes a physical office, not for me but for my client.
My client is based in Canada and my task was to setup an office here in the Philippines so they can hire more staff for their projects.
After searching and making negotiations for the past three weeks, finally we will move-in to the new office tomorrow. My final tasks is to bring the various equipments tomorrow. Wait, just a correction, I will not transfer there but I’ll oversee everything at “arms length” so to speak.
Anyway, I really want to avoid writing a post about my topic today because, honestly, you can search Google on “How To Choose A Domain Name” and you will be presented with almost 80million hits!
BUT with the recent change to Google’s Ranking algorithm, there are some facts that you should know if you want to be on Google’s top ranking.
Here’s one fact that I’ve learned recently - Google delisted, deindexed or clearly banned all .CO.CC. To prove it, enter “site:.co.cc” in your Google search engine and see the results. This affected all .CO.CC domains starting last month of June, 2011. So the rule of the thumb is, if you want Google to recognize you… Avoid .CO.CC as part of your domain.
What does this mean? It simply means Top Level Domains are still the King when it comes to choosing the right domain! Google is giving priority to sites and links derived from Top Level Domains (TLDs) such as .com, .net, .org etc.. This means that you should be using a Top Level Domain with relevant keyword(s) for your blog, affiliate pages and/or sales pages. Here’s another rule of the thumb, .COM is still the King of the Kings when it comes to TLDs but according to my own experiment, a good SEO can beat any .COM!
I’ve mentioned the word(s) Keyword(s) on my previous statement. Why? Because Google still (even with the Panda update) values a keyword within the domain name for ranking purposes.
For example, if you will search for the words ” Manila Blog”, I assure you that BlogDeManila will be in the first page of the search engine results page (SERP). Why? Because the words are there! “Manila” + “Blog” are both in BlogDeManila domain but since both terms are not in the front, BlogDeManila will be having a hard time to beat those who are actively using “Manila Blog”.
So another rule of thumb in choosing a domain name, Keyword(s) works much better when it is placed in the beginning than having another word in front of your keyword.
For those who might be asking where do I get my domain names, I will honestly tell you that I’m getting all my domains from GoDaddy and 1and1. I find them both very easy to use, specially to new bloggers or users, when it comes to choosing and buying domain names. Both have the tools to search for the keywords and both can be paid using PayPal as well.
If you’re looking for the best domain, you may use this tool to search for it:
Well, I won’t bore you with much technical details. I hope you will learn a lesson or two from my post today. Till my next post.
