The Effect Of Domain Name On SEO

Before you go and register a domain name and hosting package for your new website or online venture, you may want to think carefully for the domain name for your new site.

When come to choosing a domain name, there are few things we have to keep in mind:

1. Business/Website Nature

Before I touch on the effect of domain on SEO, it is important for me to point out that you should not decide on the domain name solely base on SEO advantage. You should also think of the benefits of domain name to your business.  A domain must represent the business or website nature. For example if you are running a business selling dog food, you may want to consider DogFood.com, Dog-Food.com, PetFeast.com etc. You want people to be able to tell what you are selling by just taking a look at your domain name. By having the right domain name will also help in the Branding of your business. Very few people will remember the domain name once they leave the website. It is therefore best to have a business nature related and also easy to remember domain name.

2. SEO Benefit

A lot of SEO guru would tell you that domain name has little effect on SEO. The truth is no one really know how much weight does the domain name carry when come to SEO. But one thing I am sure is that it does make a difference when you have your targetted keywords in your domain name. Take a look at the sample below:

I was searching on Google- “Recycle Bag’”. You can see that Google highlight the Title Tags and also the Domain names that show the keyword Recycle Bag. Therefore if you want to target certain keywords in your business, it is always a good idea to have the keyword in the domain.

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My friend Cherry reminded me of the new release of New Top Level Domain (TLD)- .co on the 20th July. It’s the beginning of the .CO era! .CO is a new domain extension that offers a truly global recognizable and credible option for a Web address.

So what does .Co stand for?  It can be anything in this era, according to the Director of Marketing of CoInternet-  it can be “company”, “corporation,” or “commerce”. And of course in today’s world, that goes beyond “company”, to collaborate, content, and community.

Do you know that e.Co is sold for $81,000!!

The Launching of .Co

The standard process followed as the launching of other TLDs. The global launch of .CO is divided into three phases: Sunrise, Landrush, and General Availability.

Sunrise (April 26, 2010 – June 10, 2010): It is created for the pre-registration of domains in order to protect trademark holders and avoid abusive registrations. For example, if I own Google, I will have the right to apply for the Google.CO domain name corresponding to my company trademark before the registration of domain names opens to the general public. By using this phased approach, abuse can be prevented. The application fee is $240.00, and upon awarded, there will be an annual renewal fee of $39.90.

Landrush (already closed on the 16 July): This is a money making time for the .Co owner - CoInternet. Why is it called Landrush? My own simple explanation is everyone rushing for their own piece of land on internet. The Landrush phase is open to everyone and lets customers pay a premium to have a chance to secure high-commercial-value domains. The domains that get attention during the Landrush phase are normally short and memorable non-trademarked terms. For example, something like sushi.co would have high value to a sushi company. That domain has the potential to rank well in search engines and would be a fantastic addition to a company’s marketing and branding efforts.

General Availability (open to public starting 20th July): This is the final, broad-release period open to PUBLIC. You and me can go in now and grab whatever domain we want, as long as it is still available. Don’t be surprise that there are many good names still there! For example, I was playing around with the .Co domain registration just few minutes ago and found that LoseWeightExercise.Co, GoHoliday.Co etc are still available!! So if you want to grab a good name, please act now. You can register your own .Co domain  name at GoDaddy.

History (source: Domain Name Wire)
Lets dwell into the boring part- History. In fact, .Co is the country code domain for Colombia. For example, .my is for Malaysia, and .Sg is for Singapore. It was originally delegated to University of The Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. For many years, the University has run tight controls on the domain name. Registration was mostly limited to Colombian companies who could register their trade name or company name as an exact match at the third level, such as name.com.co. As a result, there are only about 28,000 .co domains registered.

About ten years ago, University of The Andes started to look at opening up registration of the domain name. Colombia’s Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications got involved, and went through a painstaking process of figuring out the best way to open up the domain. Arcelandia S.A. and domain registry Neustar formed a partnership to respond to Colombia’s RFP, and was awarded a contract to run the domain for 10 years.

Unlike the recent bungled re-launch of .cm, Colombia is clearly taking a different approach. “[Colombia] wanted to make sure this was done the right way,as it’s a real issue of national pride.”

As of now, the number of.Co web address registered is 154,576. And it is going Fast and Strong!!