Chapter 4 – A Great Site Name and Address is Important for Long Term Success

 

What’s in a name?

A website name is a very important decision. Because we are utilizing the blogging medium to create a money making website you want to look at the name or title as your brand.

Far too often people are in the process of filling out a form, and put in a name that they give no thought to what so ever. They figure, it doesn’t matter because the content is what’s important right? Wrong. While the content is very important a name cane be equally as important.

One example that comes to mind is when people use slang, or terminology that does not apply to their niche. I came across a site one time that was supposedly about making money and the author had used the word “Noob” as part of the title.

The problem here is that you are trying to “sell” a website as being a credible source of information. You need to establish yourself as an authority in your niche. This becomes much harder to do when you use a word like “Noob” which means someone who is unaware of how things work.

Aside from the obvious implications of certain terms, there is also the professionalism associated with the name. I find something simple, yet memorable is a great way to go if you would like to be taken seriously.

 

The Importance of Choosing a Good Name

Choosing a good name can be hard. Let me rephrase that… Choosing a good name can be really, REALLY hard. It’s well worth taking the extra time to come up with a good name as it will stick with you for the life of your site.

If you are creating a fly by night money making venture then this may not be as important to you but if you are creating something that you plan to stick with for a long time you really need to put a good amount of thought in what you decide to go with.

When I was deciding on a name for Make Money Life it actually took me about 10-12 hours of brainstorming over the course of three days. I kept several things in mind when trying to decide on what would work.

• The name needed to explain to people what the site was about.
• It needed to be easy to remember.
• It had to be original without sounding spammy.
• The name would need to also be available as a dot com.
• I wanted the potential for good anchor text right in the name.

 

The Power of Anchor Text

“Anchor text” is the text people use to describe your site in a link. Since Google bases so much of your sites popularity on inbound links and the terms those links use to describe your site, having keywords show up in that anchor text is very desirable.

A lot of the time you do not actually have control over the anchor text someone uses to link to your site. Because of this having keywords you want to rank well for in your name can be advantageous.

When people post to my site, if they just posted my site name in the link it could commonly be formatted two ways.

makemoneylife.com

or

Make Money Life

The first link would be fine because any back links to your site are good news. But the second version would be even better because it would contain anchor text using the keywords “Make” “Money” and “Life”.

This means whenever someone linked to my site using the second variation my site would build more authority for the term “Make Money” which was one consideration I had when deciding on the name.

The reason the first variation of the link would not been seen as a keyword is because the three words do not have a space between them. This means that Google only sees it as “one” word. There is a way to overcome this though.

 

To Hyphen or not to Hyphen?

When you use hyphens in your websites name it lends itself to more potential for anchor text when people link to you.

So in our example:

makemoneylife.com

now becomes

make-money-life.com

Because the name now has hyphens in it Google will see the words as separate keywords in the same way it would if there were spaces there.

The only drawback is we are now creating a name that is much harder for people to remember so word of mouth advertising will not work as well for you. And word of mouth is the “Anchor Text” of the real world.

Most SEO experts and people who maintain credible money making websites will tell you the advantage you gain with the search engines from having a hyphenated site name is not that great.

You would mainly be doing it to try and get the benefit from the anchor text keywords when people link to you. In any case, it is usually agreed that having a memorable site name out weighs the benefit of using hyphens in your address.

It seems more professional if you do not, and your site will be easier to remember and seem less spammy. You can’t control how people are going to link to you so the benefit you would get from this is minimal in most people’s opinions, but your site name is completely up to you.

 

All the Good Names are Taken!

The name game can be a double edged sword because just when you think you have come up with something good you find out the dot com for it has already been registered.

Yeah that’s always a big downer. Because coming up with a name can be time consuming and difficult it really sucks when you find out the perfect name you just created belongs to someone else.

I have several suggestions that will help you avoid this problem, and ensure you can come up with a creative name that you will be happy with.

 

01. Availability – To ensure you original name is not in use from the start always use All Whois when coming up with name possibilities. You can type each name you are planning into the search field and know immediately if that name is available or not.

02. Description – Think of words that describe what your site is about and try to incorporate them into your name. This will give people an idea of what the site is about before they even see it. In some cases bloggers have been very successful at building their own brands (Shoemoney) but this is time consuming and expensive so it may not be the perfect choice for someone that is new to blogging.

03. Length – Competition for keywords is fierce. When you plan out keywords for your site, keep in mind that most webmasters do better optimizing for 3 to 5 word terms as opposed to 1 or 2 word terms. Although most people will recommend that your site name is no longer than 3 words long. From this we can guess that you probably have a better chance of obtaining a site name that has 2 – 3 words, than a site name that is 1 or 2.

04. Originality – Not only is making up words fun, it can create a unique name for a site that others may not have thought of yet. You could either make a name completely from scratch like some of the popular social book-marking sites, or create a new word by combining parts of two other words.

05. Variation – Using a Thesaurus to find variations of words you like can help you find a creative name. It can also help you discover a name you might not have thought of otherwise. When I plan out names I am always using a thesaurus and synonyms to come up with unique ideas.

I Have a Name! What Now??

Congratulations. You have just crossed one of the first major bridges for building your site. I know how hard it can be to come up with something you like, so if you are ready to put your idea into motion your next step would be registering your dot com so no one else can take it from you.

I would recommend using a service like Dreamhost as they can setup your address and provide you with hosting for your site. They also provide a nice “one click install” feature which setups your blog so you can easily get started.

Make Money Life readers can save $10 dollars signing up by using the coupon code:

• MMLSavings

Now that you are ready to roll you may want to check out my guide on Installing and Configuring Your Blog for the First time.