Advice needed: choosing domain names

[Darren M]

Can anyone offer me any advice on choosing domain names for some future projects? I normally create two sites and buy a domain aimed at SEO/organic traffic and another one for PPC. I'm not that worried about branding.

So if I'm selling those ever popular 'blue widgets', I might register the following

buy-blue-widgets.com - for PPC
buybluewidgets.co.uk - for organics

This strategy is based on my own assumptions...
1. Hyphenated domain names are not good for organic results
2. Hyphens help PPC adverts stand out (bold text)
3. co.uk is good for organics, but just makes a PPC URL longer

What are your thoughts, am I on the right track here?

[Itchy]

Originally Posted by top5kit.com This strategy is based on my own assumptions... 1. Hyphenated domain names are not good for organic results 2. Hyphens help PPC adverts stand out (bold text) 3. co.uk is good for organics, but just makes a PPC URL longer What are your thoughts, am I on the right track here?

1. says who ? oh you do ... having 1 hyphen isnt really all that bad but having 2 3 4 hyphens in a domain name is a waste of time if you want to brand something which you dont

2. so why dont non hyphens stand out in bold?

3. co.uk is good for erm well the UK traffic that you may or may not want if you dont want mainly UK traffic get the .com and have a free for all.

[Darren M]

Originally Posted by Itchy 1. says who ? oh you do ... having 1 hyphen isnt really all that bad but having 2 3 4 hyphens in a domain name is a waste of time if you want to brand something which you dont 2. so why dont non hyphens stand out in bold? 3. co.uk is good for erm well the UK traffic that you may or may not want if you dont want mainly UK traffic get the .com and have a free for all.

Thanks for the reply.

1. Branding aside, if you were trying to SEO a 'blues widgets' site, what would you choose? blue-widgets.co.uk or bluewidgets.co.uk? or do you think there's nothing in it?

2. Again an assumption; I thought if you were bidding on the phrase "blue widgets" that the hyphenated domain would be highlighted eg. blue-widgets.co.uk , whereas bluewidgets.co.uk (showing blue widgets as a single word) would not. Is that right?

3. I've seen a lot of UK aff sites using .com for UK targetted PPC, normally where they've got UK somewhere in the domain name. I suppose this one's just down to personal preference.

[Jack Russell]

Well, Choosing a domain name does not matter much nowadays. If you have to rank well in SE make sure that you have enough backlinks pointing your sites. If you are targetting traffic from a specific country then select a domain related to that country which helps in organic search engines.

[winningratings]

Domains name with hyphens are usually quite good alround
Depending on what the domain name looks like, all-in-one type domain names with no hyphens, but several words, simply dont look very professional to your potential visitors

Hyphens basically make the name stand out

I have tried different domains - some with hyphens and some without. Generally the ones with have done better. However this will depend on your niche and what you are targeting

The other way round this can be adding numbers to your domain name. This can sometimes work fine, but obviously depends on the domain and the niche

If you are going to use .co.uk - then this will mark you out as a UK based site. That might be fine, depending on what you are doing. Personally I always go for a dot com wherever possible

Overall I would suggest you take a bit of time and thought over your domain names, and of course remember that should you have 2 domains with the same content, then you are likely to have a problem with the search engines

[affiliate7]

- To choice your domain name you should take in consideration just your target audience, ti is better to choose just one word and you can take an idea about all the big.
- the domain rich in keywords have a smaller, smaller, smaller influcence to your ranking in search engine.
it better to choose one word for the organic web site and use a subdomain for ppc, if they are related.

TO RANK WELL IN SEARCH ENGINE specially Google = links + anchor text (even with white web page).
Did not give domain important to help you to rank well, give one word that people tape it very quickly and take it very quickly that can have more importance.
Hey, I made this mistake at the biginning. (do not forget that there are some idea online that work for 1990 not for nowadays and many people contunue to give them as an advice).
-.com is better because people considered .com as more reputable and trust it more.
-but .co.uk. can help you for UK ranking.

[Dynamoo]

For most competitive terms, keyword stuffing in the domain is a waste of time because Google already counters it (this is why viagra-viagra-viagra-viagra-viagra-viagra-viagra-viagra-viagra.com isn't number one for sildenafil citrate).

However, I think having an organic domain and PPC domain is a very good idea as it will allow you to track both independently. Don't forget to use robots.txt to block the Googlebot from the PPC domain though (it's a different bot for AdWords).