Your domain name can be a critical factor in the success of your internet business.  In addition to quickly conveying to visitors what your business is all about, it may also play a role in how well your site will rank for your chosen keyword(s) or phrase in the search engines.

It’s always a good idea to do a little bit of keyword research before deciding on a domain name.  A great free keyword tool is the Google Keyword Tool.  What you’ll need to do is to type the main keyword into the box (I like to keep the “use synonyms” box checked) and click the “Get Keyword Ideas” button.  In a few moments, you’ll be presented with a list of related searches (based on actual user data) and approximate figures for search volume that are performed by users when they are searching for something that is related to your keyword.

Why is this good?  It can help you to zero in on the keywords that will make the biggest impact on your business.  For example, let’s say you sell “widgets” on your website.  Obviously, someone has probably already registered the domain name widgets.com (just a hypothetical example) and is not willing to part with the name for anything less than $3 million.  Sort of rules out that name, doesn’t it?  But with a little bit of further research, you might see that there are a lot of people who actually use the search term “buy widgets online”.  In addition to having an important keyword in the phrase, this term has huge potential for your business because it is a very targeted phrase.  It suggests that the searcher is in a “buying” (as opposed to just browsing) frame of mind when they make this type of search!

Now if you were searching using the phrase “buy widgets online” wouldn’t you be enticed to click on a search result that has the domain name BuyWidgetsOnline.com or some close variant of it?  I thought so!  This example illustrates why doing a littble bit of keyword research before you decide on a domain name can make all the difference.

There are still a lot of good domain names available with extentions other than .com (ie .net, .org, .us.com, etc), but the fact is that it has become so ingrained into people’s psyche to think “dot com” when trying to remember the name of a website.  For this reason, It’s always best to try to come up with a name that is available as a .com.  It would be frustrating as all heck to have a domain name like buywidgetsonline.net only to lose your customers to the store that owned the .com version of your name as people inadvertently type in “.com” out of habit.

Another strong case for having important keywords in your domain name is the role it can potentially play in the way the search engines rank your site on the search result pages (SERPS).  It is my personal belief that this is an important factor.

To illustrate this point, much of my affiliate marketing revenue comes from the online dating industry.  While the terms “dating” or “online dating” are way too competitive and out of my reach (at the moment- ha ha), I have a number different sites that have consistently ranked within the Top Ten search results on Google for a couple of years now.  These are for some highly competitive and targeted two-word keyword phrases.  A couple have even been # 1 for quite a while now.

Can you guess what the domain names might have in common?  Right!  They are loaded with the key phrases that are important for each different dating niche.  Although the two-word versions of the domains were already taken (but of course…), I was able to come up with decent-sounding 3-word version of the keyword phrases.  Using this technique, I’ve managed to build a “brand” of dating sites in this manner.  This is also great for helping people to remember the name of your site as well.

One more tip regarding domain name registration:  it may be worthwhile to register your name for more than one year at a time.  Many spammers only register a name for 1 year (the minimum term) and the folks who engineer the algorithms at the search engines are quite aware of this fact.  Your business will look more “credible” in this regard if you go for several years at a time.  If at all possible, go ahead and register it for 10 years if you plan on being in business for the long haul - it certainly can’t hurt.

Ready to get that great domain name?  I personally use and also highly recommend The World’s Largest Registrar - GoDaddy.com for buying domain names.  The prices are outstanding and if you keep all of your various domain names together at one registrar, it can greatly simplify the task of managing your entire domain name portfolio.