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What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet. – Shakespeare

Seriously though what is in a name? Does such a small thing matter? Yes and no.

Look around. Its a very busy world. Ads all over. TV, radio, internet, newspaper, magazine and what not. What do they all have in common? Short, simple, catchy phrases. Do you know where I’m heading with this?

Now before we even start with having a little catchy tagline for your site or blog, we’ll have to deal with the name. So, yes names do matter (especially on the web) unless you would rather listen to the ancient playwright.

I personally have a hard time finding a decent name. I keep changing my mind more than I change gears while driving standard. A true fact. And I honestly know how hard it is when you finally find the perfect name only to find out the domain is taken.

Alright lets assume you have a domain and you’ve got a better one to work with. Now what? The fear of losing traffic and SEO. Well no worries. You can always do a 301 redirect using .htaccess.

Open up Notepad, paste the following and upload it to your root directory. It works like magic.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yournewdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Now its very important that you make sure that this file is named .htaccess (no extentions like .txt or anything). And lets just hope this time you’ve picked a better domain.

I noticed that most sites have a messy page title. They have like a shit load of stuff in the page title. Now that’s not really good. You need something nice and clean. Let me try to explain why. Oh and this post is targeted towards dynamic sites like forums or blogs.

SERPs! You need to get clicked on the SERPs. People are a bit lazy. They don’t read most of the time. They “scan”. And the last thing you want is a huge page title. All you need is a good title for your post (or page).

Which one looks better to you?

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I even saw people include their tagline. Like I don’t think your site’s name, keywords and/or tagline is important. And I noticed TechCrunch, Daily Blog Tips, ProBlogger, etc with these type of “clean” page titles.

So, go ahead and clean yours up. Oh and you can put your tagline or a few good keywords in the title of your home page. Well anyways feel free to share how you like to keep your page titles and if you’re thinking about switching to these “cleaner” titles.

Update (Sept 5, 08): This isn’t really exact science. This post was made to light that bulb in your head. You need to play around and find the one that works for you. And if you plan on taking out your site’s name then don’t worry about the branding part like Kara (a reader) was. A good favicon should do the job.

Keep it short, simple and descriptive. That should work like a charm!

Its been a long time since I made a post related to SEO. So, I’ll do that today. I’ll talk about all the basic SEO stuff you need to know about domains. Okay lets get started

Register domains for long periods

Google (and other search engines) penalizes sites with domains that are going to expire soon. And you should always buy domains for long periods (like 2-3 years) because search engines look at the domain’s stability and spam sites often buy their domains for short periods.

It won’t cost you a fortune to buy the domain for a few extra years, but it will be worth it.

Does TLD matter?

Nope. It doesn’t matter to Google which TLD you’re using. That’s good, huh? I’ve seen a lot of people say that Google prefers .coms but that’s not the case. And one more thing, Matt Cutts was saying that Google might penalize .infos because they’re mostly used by spam sites.

You get the old PR if you buy the domain

Wrong! Google resets the PR and doesn’t count the old backlinks when you buy the domain (whether it was expired or if you bought it directly from the owner). Well it should be a bit obvious. Why would someone wanna give you credit for something you didn’t do?

BTW, there are ways to keep the old PR. You need to buy the domain directly from the owner. Make sure that it isn’t about to expire. Don’t change the content and design right away. You’ll have to do it slowly or else Google will just reset the PR because its not relevant to the site anymore. And make sure that you don’t change the registrant details right away. Change it one by one (ex: email address, name, phone, etc).

Moving site to a new domain

Don’t worry you can “safely” move your site to a new domain by using a 301 redirect. You’ll have to do it by putting this small code in your .htaccess file.

Redirect 301 / http://www.NEW-SITE.com/

Keyword in the domain

Does Google like domains with keywords in them? Yes it does. So, it would come in handy if you could have an important keyword in the domain. But, don’t make it long and ugly. Take a look at this if you need help choosing a great domain.

Check the domain’s past

Some domains might have a horrible past. You wanna check it before you buy the domain. The domain could’ve been banned by search engines (maybe for spam or adult content). Just go to the Wayback Machine and do a quick search.

Also see if it had some heavy link exchanging (aka link farm). Link farms get banned by search engines. So, you better watch out.

Okay that’s it. This should get you started. Just remember not to go crazy for a high PR or backlinks. Be honest and play safe. Oh and take a look at WebsiteGrader (it scores your SEO).