Choosing and buying a domain name is often done impulsively once the decision is made to have a web site. This is unfortunate because choosing the "best" domain name is the single most important thing one can do to optimize a website for the search engines. If your company name is "John Q Public," it might seem that the best domain name would be JohnQPublic.com. If all of your potential customers know the name of your company already, then it might indeed be the best domain name for you to have, because when people search for your website, they will most likely find it.

However if you are trying to reach potential customers who are not familiar with the name of your company, they will be searching for the product or service that you have to offer, not for the name of your company. So for example, if you primary product is widgets, and your domain name is widgets.com, they will find your site quickly.

You may now be thinking of your primary product or service, and that you should quickly buy that domain name. Nothing is quite that simple. If your product is unique, and folks who search for it know the name of the product or service, and know how to spell it, and if a number of other factors are in place, then it might work.

How do you choose the best domain name for your site? The best domain name is the best keyword for your site, which is determined using a program that compiles the statistics on how often and how many searchers are using what keywords to search for your product or service, on what search engines, as well as how many other sites are competing for the same or similar keywords. The results are used to determine the best keyword for your site, which you can incorporate in your domain name. Unless you are in the SEO business, you probably don't want to have to pay for the program or have the expertise to interpret the results. Not to worry, our parent company, Search Engines 411 Inc., can do that for a minimal fee.

Step 2 Hosting

When looking for a Web Host, the first inclination may be to use a free or cheap host.

That is penny wise but pound foolish, because free/cheap hosting services:

• often limit your access to your files
• often have excessive 'downtime' during which your site is not available for visitors or search engine spiders
• often have inadequate tech support
• often host sites on 'shared' IP addresses with other sites that have detrimental effects on the ability of your site to rank high on the search engines.
• often charge extra fees for things you don't realize you even need until you get the bill!
• often reserve copyrights on some or all of the content on your site, making it difficult or impossible for you to move to another hosting company once you realize the predicament you are in.

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Step 3 Web Design

Web design for a personal site is important for the folks that visit the site. Web design for a business site is important for the folks that visit the site, and also for the search engines.

The most beautiful site I have ever seen was never listed on any search engine - so nobody ever found it. Why? It was designed in a manner that prevented the search engine spiders from navigating through the site, so it was like a beautiful billboard on a closed road.

The ins and outs of site design are far too lengthy to go into here - and are better dealt with on an individual site basis.

Many site designers are wonderful graphic artists, but are not well versed in SEO techniques. If you expect your site to rank high on the search engines, you need a site that is designed with SEO built in and maintained, or you need the site optimized after it is built and then maintained. Those are your choices. The first alternative is less expensive than the latter. If you do neither, you are essentially putting up a beautiful billboard on a closed road.

To see what the search engine spiders see, IF they find our site, use the Search Engine Spider Simulator below.