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Finding the best domain name (web address) can help you achieve higher search engine ranking.

Use search terms in domain name
When the internet was in it’s infancy, everyone scrambled for the shortest possible web addresses.  This works well when your name is “IBM” but can get tricky if your name is “Peoria Day Nursery and Children’s Center Preschool”.  Abbreviations can work well if they are logical, but for search engine purposes, “PDNCC.org” is not helpful since it doesn’t include words that people would search for such as nursery, children, preschool, daycare, etc. 

Keywords included in web addresses carry considerable weight with search engines.  They figure that if the word “school” is part of a web address, then that site would likely be of interest to a web surfer doing a search including the word “school”.  So if the name of your organization is “ABC company” and you sell shoes and boots, for SEO purposes, instead of ABC.com you’d be better off with ABCShoes.com or ABCShoesandBoots.com.  Adding dashes (-) to separate words does not necessarily help, and it could confuse people. 

While it is always proper to use the company name as the domain, if your site has a particular geographic focus, including it can give a significant boost in rank.  Using your location as part of the URL helps you show up when visitors key in the city or state they are interested in.  “ABCShoesNewYork.com” tells us your company name, what you sell and where you are.

Many organizations purchase several domain names, to prevent their competition from using similar ones to try to confuse people into visiting the wrong website.
At around $10 per year for each name, purchasing a few could be inexpensive insurance.  ABC may go with ABCShoes.com, ABC-Shoes.com, ABCShoesandBoots.com, ABCShoes.net and have each of those domains forward to the official web address so visitors would end up at the same destination regardless of which of the above they punched in.
More information

Establish a concise list of objectives for your website.
What do you want to accomplish? Sell a product?  Sell a service? Gather contact info for emailing or calling?  Sign up a new member?  Motivate to visit a physical location? Motivate to call?  Invite to take a survey?  Invite to submit feedback?  When you’ve decided what actions to prompt visitors to take, you can design your site for all pages to work towards that goal or goals.

Determine your market niche and focus.

 
If you want to drive people to visit your brick and mortar location, be sure that maps and driving directions are prominent.  Include photos of the location.  Include testimonials of how easy it was for customers to find it and what great service they received there.  Make your business hours clear.
 
What is your niche market?
If you have several goals, you may need to decide between having one or more sites.  With multiple products or services that are closely related, one site may be sufficient, but if they differ slightly or you’ll be marketing them differently, unique sites may be best so that each can achieve it’s particular purpose.  One larger site can be easier to administer and the combined volume of content could be better for SEO.

Keep your navigation logical and your order process simple.  Offer “help” pages or windows when any doubt could arise about what visitors should do next or what information to enter in forms.  This is where “pop-up windows” can be helpful.  If someone is interested enough to take out their credit card or submit information, don’t lose them by complicating the process.  Make it clear what buttons to press and which links to choose for their individual needs.

Identify your target audience
Who exactly are you trying to reach?  Are they located in a particular geographic area?  How old are they and might they have any technical or physical challenges?  What information do they need, and how fast? Will graphics help?  What is their typical financial situation?  Are they male, female or both?  What is their age group and education level?  What keywords would they use to describe your product/service?  Answering these questions will help improve your conversion rate without wasted effort and cost.  The better you understand your customers, the easier to meet their needs.  What is your niche?
The above factors could help you determine any of these:
 - Language(s) for site to use and/or how formal text should be
 - Text size and colors
 - Amount of text per page and reading level of terminology used
 - Objective of site (online sale or visit location or contact via phone or email)
 - Types of images to best reinforce text
 - Most appealing images of people (similar age/race/occupational make-up)

Determining proper search terms (keywords and keyphrases) to focus on is critical to achieve the best possible search engine and directory rankings.

SEO vs. SEM
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) includes any web design techniques used to achieve the best possible “natural” or “organic” search engine results.  These are the regular (main) listings on each page of results.  Some SEO methods are incorporated during site development and some can be added at any time or on an ongoing basis (such as link building).  Most methods don’t cost a lot of money, but some require a considerable investment of time.  The time commitment will prove to be worthwhile as it is amortized over the life of the site at no financial cost.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) basically includes any techniques to produce traffic that cost money. Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is the best example.  These “paid listings” or “sponsored results” appear alongside or on top of organic results for the same terms.  PPC terms are often sold through auctions.  More general or popular terms (such as “dogs”) are more expensive to bid for than targeted or less popular ones (such as “poodles” or “german shepards”).

Another SEM technique is inclusion in paid directories, either general (such as Yahoo Directory for $299), regional (state or city-specific)  or industry-specific organizations.

SEM is online advertising and requires an ongoing budget.  You can start, stop, or make changes to campaigns at any time and improve your results through analysis of traffic and sales.  SEO does not produce such instantaneous results.  It can take as long as 4-8 weeks to see “natural” effects.  To “cover all bases” a combination of SEO and SEM is often employed.
Broad (generic) terms vs. Targeted (specific) terms
From Wikipedia.org: “Not all sites have identical goals for search optimization. Some sites are seeking any and all traffic, and may be optimized to rank highly for common search phrases. A broad search optimization strategy can work for a site that has broad interest, such as a periodical, a directory, or site that displays advertising with a CPM [cost per thousand impressions] revenue model.

In contrast, many businesses try to optimize their sites for large numbers of highly specific keywords that indicate readiness to buy. Overly broad search optimization can hinder marketing strategy by generating a large volume of low-quality inquiries that cost money to handle, yet result in little business. Focusing on desirable traffic generates better quality sales leads, resulting in more sales. Search engine optimization
can be very effective when used as part of a smart niche marketing strategy.”

In other words, “drill down” to your particular specialty within your broader category, similar to the structure of directories.  Concentrate on these more specific terms:
Apparel > Footwear > Athletic Shoes > Running Shoes > Nike
Travel > Vacation Packages > Adventure Trips > Safaris > Kenya Safaris
Health > Nutrition > Dietitians > Vegan Dietitians > Chicago Vegan Dietitians

A page for each search term?
Create distinct pages for each search term so that any individual page might rank highly enough to appear within the first 3 pages of directory or S.E. results, even if it is not the home page.  If you have several products or services, give each it’s own page where you can highlight the distinct terminology and characteristics.  When the differences are slight, consider writing a page or article on one of them where you simply replace one possible keyword for another.  For example, you may use the word “car” on one page and “auto” on another page.

Concentrate on your company’s strengths and dominate your niche!

Keep the search engines happy!
Website traffic received from people finding you in search engine and directory listings is a beautiful thing. Not only is it cheaper than advertising, you automatically have motivated prospects, assuming the search term they entered is the main topic of the page on your site that they land on. It’s many times more difficult to rank on the first three pages of results than it was just a couple years ago, due to the exponential growth of
the web.  Use every tool at your disposal to shoot for the top!

Generate a list of keywords
Keywords and keyword phrases are the “search terms” entered into Yahoo or Google or any other listing of sites. If your site is built to satisfy human visitors, you’re off to a good start with the search engines as well, but
a little tweaking can squeeze out a lot more visitors.   Any word or phrase that someone may use to refer to a subject should be considered as part of the text in the page(s) discussing it.  When keywords are part of your text, you have a chance of appearing in search engine results for those keywords.  When you don’t specifically include them in your text, you’ll be out in the cold. 

If there are lots of possibilities, the most popular and targeted words or expressions should be incorporated to increase your odds for the most traffic possible.  For example, a website for “used cars” should consider various synonyms such as “autos”, “automobiles”, “sedans”, “pre-owned cars”, and particular makes and models.  Any one page could use several terms interchangeably or distinct pages could be created for each term. 
Your home page can contain more general terms and supporting pages will target more specifics.

Analysis of “key phrases” is a critical step for both SEO and SEM (Search Engine Marketing = Pay Per Click marketing) so it is doubly important. Both entail determining what potential customers type when looking for information and using those exact words and phrases to increase visibility in the search results for the most relevant terms for your business.  Yes, web surfers help you write your text!

Generate a list of your keywords, considering technical terms, common usage, and even slang terms and phrases since different people will search for your product in different ways.  Prior to finalizing your text, research, brainstorm, visit other websites, check a thesaurus for synonyms, ask your friends and definitely use tools such as the Google Keyword Tool. For many sites, your state or city or town can be an important keyword, since surfers may type in a search for “buy cars in Boston”.

The Google Keyword Tool is the top device for helping you climb the charts, and is free!  Enter what you feel is a generic phrase into the Keyword Variations Tab and your results are the most important terms (when ranked by ‘search volume’) for that topic which searchers use to describe it. For pay per click advertising, it even shows the terms where there is the greatest and least competition. 

Google Traffic Estimator is also free and uses historical results to predict traffic for selected phrases.  WordTracker is another popular tool for determining keywords.   Abakus Topword Key Phrase Density checker can also assist with creation of “Title” and “META tags”.  These are important coded instructions that appear in the invisible, or HEAD section of a web page and are used by Search Engines to help “index” the page in appropriate
SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages).   Finally, SEObook website provides a search volume comparison tool.

Search term comparison is a great way to compare popularity of terms and company names, so you can concentrate on including the terms most likely to be searched for.   Use the free tool: Google Trends.

Choose your favorite tools and go ahead and ask your customers what they search for!  Learn more in my Boost Your Website’s Profitability book!