Don’t worry. I’m not about to discuss naming my new child. You know the conversation . . . “Which would suit him best . . . Vladimir, Justin, Tiberius, Kevin or Dave . . . blah blah blah. He’s about 12 inches tall, he’s pink, has a cheeky grin and farts a lot”.

But wait a minute, while we’re on the subject, it’s got to be Vladimir right?

Seriously now. I’m talking about website names. Domain names. URL’s.

I’m a big believer in ‘horses for courses’ on this subject. Case in point, Making You Richer. The idea of the product is . . . to make you richer. Genius don’t you think?

But it can be difficult naming a ‘make money online’ site and if you don’t believe me just go to your favourite domain seller, Godaddy, Low Cost Names etc and try to find a great name. They’re all gone!

makemoneyonline.com? Gone.
internetriches.com? Gone.
onlineriches.com? Gone.
affiliatemarketing.com? Gone.
easymoneyonline.com? Gone.

Although amazingly enough . . . www.i-will-help-you-make-money-with-affiliate-marketing-for-a-very-reasonable-membership-fee.com is still available. As soon as I’ve finished typing, I’m off to godaddy to grab me that beauty.

Anyway, we’ve spent the last 3 or 4 weeks upgrading MYR. And we’re keeping the same name as it’s only a smallish upgrade compared to what we have planned over the next few months. We’re about to start a big, huge, monumental, massive, gigantic, enormous revamp. So what about the name once we relaunch?

Well, we think ‘www.MakingYouRicherV2.com’ has a ring to it. Or, as Sandis suggested, ‘www.MakingYouALittleMoreRicher.com’. Hey, it works for me!

There seems to be a lot of debate regarding domain names. Does your domain name make a difference to your SEO? Will a relevant name get you more traffic? Is it best to use hyphens to break a multi word domain name up? Is your domain name important at all?

How about Ebay?????? What the hell is an ebay anyway? Where did the name come from? Amazon? For books?? What the . . . ?? OK, so you might want a good book or 2 if you’re taking a trip up the Amazon.

And you know where I’m going now don’t you? Goog . . . on second thoughts, let’s not go there after all.

It just shows that a relevant domain name is not essential for success. But for us mere mortals, who are taking our first steps to fame and fortune, I still think we need to stick to names which if possible, sum up our site content. Only my opinion of course.

With that in mind I thought I’d ask our in house SEO genius Craig, if he would shed some useful light on this subject. So, over to you Craig . . .

In my experience choosing the right domain name is important for SEO. Not only have I seen results come from good domain names alone with my own eyes Matt Cutts himself mentioned that Google does but weight on both keywords in the domain and the TLD.

I’ll keep it short for this post but there are a few basic rules for choosing your domain name from an SEO stand point.

1) Keep it short. As short as possible, no 15 keyword strings, I would say 30 characters maximum. Aim for 10-20.

2) Include keywords as much as possible. Yes Google, Amazon and Yahoo aren’t keywords but you are not trying to make a product or search portal, you are making something for a search portal. You need the spiders to understand what your site is about and keywords in the domain name helps. It also gives you keyword intensive anchor text when links are auto formatted to anchor with your URL.

3) .com and .net are the winners. Branch to local TLD’s (such as .co.uk) for local targeting but other than that avoid choosing other domain extensions. I strongly advise you avoid .info and .biz I’m not saying these domains are worthless, just best to avoid.

4) No more than 2 dashes. If any at all.

5) Make sure the domain isn’t stung. Offer to buy too good to be true? Usually because it is, check internet archives, Google index and a domains current content, if it has been banned drop negotiations because its not worth the hassle.

6) Don’t kill you brand for SEO. Brand is more important in the end, if you have an innovative brand name and loyal visitors don’t shift domains for the sake of SEO.

So there you have it. And if I were you I’d pay close attention to Craig. I regularly see what he achieves with sites and I’ll be making a note of his wisdom myself.

Now I’m off to Godaddy to grab me that rather desirable domain name. See you later.