The study of search engine optimization is without a doubt a very vast one. One of the many weapons that SEO practitioners usually use is a good domain name that is optimized for their SEO campaigns. You know what they say… “A good head start is half the battle won”. Hence if you are looking to do well with your SEO campaigns, you should get yourself a good domain name… one that the search engines will totally adore.
What are Search Engine Optimized domains?
Firstly we need to take a good look at what is defined as a Search Engine Optimized campaign. Well naturally the domain name has to be relevant to your product niche. Most SEO experts will agree that you should try to insert your keywords into your domain name so that it will give out a signal of relevance to the search engines. It would help if your product name itself contains the keywords as well.
Of course, we might not always be lucky to get a domain that you want simply because someone else has already taken a hold of it. Therefore when faced with situations like this, you should try to adjust or tweak your domain name a little to find a domain name that is still available for purchase.
For example, if you are in the gaming niche and you are looking to promote a game called ‘Call of Duty’ then you might want to consider a domain name such as ‘callofdutytricks.com’ or ‘callofdutytips.com’ that would do well. Of course, as mentioned before if would do even better if that’s the name of your product. Now if the keyword that you are targeting for being actually ‘call of duty tips’ then you can already see why your domain is much more relevant to what the searches done on that keyword. You will get a good head start with this search term.
Next is the age of the domain you are looking for. The age of a domain is important because the longer the domain has been used before the more chance it has to have been indexed before by the search engine and it might have a good standing record in the eyes of the search engine. Hence it would make it easier for you to rank them on the search engines later on. There are definitely domains out there that have expired but have already gotten a good existing page rank from the search engines. These are the kind of domain that you will want to look out for and these are the kinds of domains that are very valuable. Needless to say this kind of domain will have a much higher price tag. Do your research and buy accordingly.
Lastly you will want your domains to be using top-level domain such as .Com and .Net. These are viewed as the best kinds of domain and it is said to help get you more ‘priority’ when it comes to ranking your domain in the search engine results. Many top SEO experts will prefer to use these kinds of domains as opposed to the rest. Hence the smart thing to do is to choose these kinds of domains for your SEO efforts.
Why you need them?
Good question. And the obvious answer would be that when you are armed with a good and optimized domain, you should be able to rank higher on the search engines. Priorities will be given to a domain that is highly relevant to the search term and to a domain that has some age associated with it. Hence, try your best to buy a domain that is in these criteria because it could potentially save you a lot of trouble when you start your SEO efforts.
Where to find these domains?
There are actually many domain brokers and domain registrars that you can use to locate these valuable domain names. Mind you that some of these brokers may charge a tad bit too much from the usual price so you will have to be very diligent and only buy if you feel that the price is right. Now the next thing you need to be worrying about if you are buying an aged domain is that if that domain has any penalty for it? Sometimes some of these domains were banned by Google or other search engines before so it would be best to check first before making the final purchase.
How to check for penalties on older domains?
Now to test if there has been a ban on a domain before you actually make the purchase it to check the robot.txt file. Checking this will verify if your domain has been banned by a Google bot or not. The next thing you can do is to actually point a link back to the domain from a trusted site and see if Google will actually index it or not. This can quickly tell you if the domain is still in a tip top condition. If you are doing this right, you should see the domain indexed within 24 hrs. So now that you know how to test your domains, try your best to get a good domain every single time you look to start a new SEO campaign and you should see a significant difference in your rankings fast.
