When developing a site one of the basic and vital steps is to get it registered. It can be the difference between getting started with your dream of creating a successful online website, or putting off your dream for another day. The internet is highly sensitive to SEO techniques these days, and that is why you should keep domain registration in mind when doing so. Having an “exact match domain name” for your site is key for Google search results if you want your website to be well established in the future.
Basically, this would mean that when someone is searching for ‘Mashable’ the domain registration would be Mashable.com or Mashable.co.za. If you cannot register for an exact match then the next best thing would be to get a domain name with at least your site name in it. For example Mashablepotatoes.com or SuperMashable.com
Domains with exact match
Having a domain name with an exact match can be highly useful in terms of your SEO techniques, and has a high success rate when it comes to PageRank. Ideal domains to register for are .com or .biz
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.com
Originally intended for commercial use it has lost its original purpose and is now known as an international domain name.
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.biz
There are no other limits to register for a .biz account other than it has to be for a bona fide business or commercial use.
Doing Keyword research
The next step would be to sign up with Google services such as Google’s Keyword Tool. Google keywords will help you asses which are the best keywords to use for your site. Try to use less competitive keywords for short term goals and highly competitive ones for long term goals. Highly contested keywords will take a lot of hard work and dedication to rank for, and that is why I advise it only as a long term goal or you’ll just be disappointed from the start.
So what do you do with the keywords? You will be using your keywords on your website when posting content and when people want to link to your site. You want people and the internet to know that the specific keywords you chose are relevant to your site and that’s why you want to use them.
When writing an article on your website you should at least have your keyword display in your article twice and once in the H1. The H1 is the title of your article. Try adding the keyword you picked for your home page in your article as well. This is called internal linking.
I’ll give you an example. We determined that Mashable potatoes and Johnny Depp were the best keywords for our site when we used the keyword tool provided by Google. When I write an article and it’s posted on www.mashable.com/potatoes I will try to get at least one keyword linking back to my main page. Here’s an example:
“Every day that I have potatoes I like to eat them with a spoon and a fork. My mom said that I shouldn’t use my hands when I eat them even if Johnny Depp said on Mashable that it’s the best way to enjoy them.”
The two keywords potatoes and Johhny Depp were added in my article as non linkable keywords and Mashable will be linked to my homepage (www.Mashable.com)
Domain Register Companies
As you enter domain registers in Google you will see that there are many companies offering their services at a cheap cost for your domain name. Be wary of bargain deals and fantastic offers. Nine out of ten times it is most likely a scam and it will be people who only want to take your money by selling you domains that are already registered or not working at all.
The better sites such as godaddy.com, register.com and domainregister.com are ideal for first timers and veterans. As you enter the site you will be able to enter the desired keyword for your domain name and it will go through the list of already registered domains and give you a result. They also give you package deals and extra services, should you wish to take them.
Honourable Mention: Hosting Companies
Okay so we are talking about domain registrations, but I thought it would be a good idea to give you some tips about hosting companies. Basically, how it works is that you take all of the files you have been working on such as the HTML files or Joomla CMS setups and sign up with a hosting company to upload it to their server so that it will be online.
What you are doing is taking your whole code and exposing it to the internet instead of it just being on your computer. So, even when you switch your PC off (since all of us need to sleep), it will still be available to browse for other clients.
When you sign up, you will also have different packages to sign up with for bandwidth limits. This is merely to use when people upload images to your site or when data is being exchanged under different circumstances. A one gig bandwidth limit should be enough so don’t worry too much about exceeding the limit if you’re not a well established website yet.
