If you’re an avid web surfer, you probably see the term “search engine optimization” or at least the acronym “SEO” on a daily basis. In fact, you see that term all over this website. But what is it and why should I care? Well, unless you own a website and want to build traffic to it, you shouldn’t care. SEO is only for website owners or internet marketers that promote other peoples’ websites. Search engine optimization is the process of preparing your website in the best possible way so that the search engines will be able to “read” your website & give it a higher ranking. As a website owner, you want to have the highest search engine ranking as possible. The higher ranking your website has, the better chance it has for people to find it.
As we all know, the internet is made up of billions of websites. It’s a massive ocean of interests & knowledge and your website is but a spec of sand at the bottom. Well, it’s a spec of sand until it has been optimized for search engines. If your website isn’t listed on the search engines, there’s a very high probability that no one will ever find it. If no one ever finds it, then what’s the purpose of having it to start with? Personally, if I’m going to spend the time and energy (and sometimes money) to create a website, I want to do everything I possibly can to ensure that it gets found in the vast ocean of other web pages. And, that’s where SEO comes in.
There are hundreds of things you can do with SEO on your website and even offline. But for now, I’m only going to list a few of the things you can do with your website in this article. When time permits, I’ll come back and share more SEO tips & tricks that you can do both on and offline. So, let’s get started with the basics.
Picking a Domain Name:
As I mentioned before, picking a domain name is the first step in search engine optimization. A domain name should be short so that it is easily remembered and passed along via word-of-mouth. However, a domain name should also include words that are both relevant to your site and popular with the search engines. For example, let’s pretend your name is “Joe” and you are in the business of selling “books”. Let’s even pretend that you have a brick and mortar store called “Joe’s Bookstore”. Well, “joesbookstore.com” would be the most obvious domain name to choose. Why? It is both relevant to the content of your website and it includes keywords that will help the search engines find your website for displaying in the search results.
What if “joesbookstore.com” is already taken? Well, chances are it will be. But, there are other alternatives you can pick from that closely resemble “joesbookstore.com”. For instance, you can always choose to use hyphens in your domain name such as “joes-bookstore.com” or even “joes-book-store.com”. However, I would only suggest using hyphens in your domain name if there are absolutely no other alternatives that suit your website. One reason for not using hyphens is because it is harder to remember hyphens in a domain name than it is to remember a simple phrase such as “joes bookstore dot com”. If you decide to go with “joes-book-store.com” because there is already a “joesbookstore.com”, chances are you are going to lose a lot of traffic and business to the latter. You don’t want to go through all of the hard word, time, energy, and money to create & promote a website only to have your competitor reap the rewards. So, I’d try to stay away from using hyphens in a domain name if possible.
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