domain names

recently been talking about domain names with clients, sometimes its hard to get a 'decent' website name that ticks all the right boxes of easy to remember (the radio test), relevant, contain one or more important keywords to your site (SEO optimised) and does contain a trademark.

You will find that nearly all one and two word domains are taken or have been bought and are for sale, even two word hyphenated domains are hard to get nowdays but more commonly we are buying two word hypenated website domain names for our clients that contain the geographical location of their business.

recently we have:

essex-web-designers.co.uk
essex-wedding-car.co.uk
essex-steam-cleaning.co.uk
essex-personal-assistant.co.uk
essexcleaningcompany.co.uk

google / yahoo have hinted that their is some seo value in having your target keywords in your domain name so if you are in yahoo and search for web designer essex you will see that we are the first choice (we believe that yahoo give more weighting in their search algorithm for domain name keywords)

so we will continue to use 2 and 3 word essex or area related hypenated domain names as it seems to meet all the criteria and in the light of the fact that 'all the best ones are gone' we can only continue to do this as we dont believe in spending money on domain names, as its a cost a new business doesnt need before making any money, thats said at the right price some domain names would be attractive (especially if they have a static rank / page rank associated with them and they are > 2years old)

another reason for using hyphens, you may end up with

www.whorepresents.com who represents
www.expertsexchange.com experts exchange
www.penisland.net pen island
therapistfinder.com therapist finder
molestationnursery.com mole station nursery - now sadly closed
gasheating.co.uk gas heating
powergenitalia.com powergen italia