This is an enormous topic. I am going to focus on main points someone needs to know to start a new website.
- Choose your domain name carefully. While you might like the idea of calling your site www.yourlastname_enterprises.com, unless your name is already synonymous with your product or service, this is is not descriptive. Cryptic abbreviations are also not descriptive, to people who are not familiar with your site; abbreviations might look like a sequence of unrelated letters. It is best to choose a domain name that includes your keywords.For example, here are some examples of actual domain names available for purchase on GoDaddy.com:
- webcontentwriter.com
- freelancewriter.com
- seocopywriter.com
- Stick with dot.com. If you have a domain name you wish to use, but find out someone else has already registered it, I strongly recommend against registering it anyway and using an alternate extension, such as .net or .biz. It might work out fine, but you will run the risk of accidentally driving business to someone else’s site, if people don’t remember your alternative extension. Similarly, when you register a domain name, it is a good idea to consider registering the alternative extensions to ensure nobody else grabs them and attempts to capitalize on your hard work. If you have the budget, it’s a good idea to register similar versions to your domain name, for instance, if you use hyphens in your domain name, you might want to register the name with and without hyphens, to increase the changes that people will find your site. For example, if you click www.netflicks.com – you are automatically routed to www.netflix.com. It might seem like the search engine knew what you were looking for, but actually, someone at Netflix realized the likelihood that people would type in “netflicks,” so they registered that domain name too.
- Once you have a domain name picked out, check to see if it is available on a domain registrar site, such as GoDaddy.com.
Of course it is not necessary to purchase an existing name. I’m just including these as good examples of descriptive domain names. And if you’re thinking this advice was not taken by Google, Yahoo, Flickr, etc. I don’t know what to tell you. These companies violated the most basic SEO rule and lived to tell about it. If you think you can do the same, knock yourself out.