Buying and Choosing A domain Name

[nobi]

I am just wondering, if you got a brandnew domain name you have to wait at least two years to get any serious traffic as Google will put you into the sandbox.
Any thoughts on that?

[James]

You might check out this post from Lisa: 100,000 Monthly Page Views

In barely over a year with an isolated site not drawing on her reputation elsewhere she reached 100,000 page views a month in just over a year. Would you consider that serious traffic?

[DavidIsMyName]

I would like your help on choosing a domain name. I have these two which are still available.

Making-Money-Online-For-Beginners.Com
MakingMoneyonline4beginners.net

My current domain is Makingmoneyonlineforbeginners.net, and was affected by Unnatural back links as per Google, even after trying to use their disavow tool to disregard those links, they still tell me that they find unnatural links on my site.

I am already fed up and need to proceed; buy a new domain and transfer all the content to the new domain i will choose and buy.

Please advice me on the right path to take.

Thanks a lot as always for your help.

Charles.

They're also cracking down on exact phrases domain names too so I would just give up on the whole making money online for beginners stuff.

Websites, even quality websites like Chris Guthries' MakeMoneyOnTheInternet.com have been hit because these names are typically (but not always) registered by marketers who in turn make low quality websites that don't actually answer the needs and wants of the end user who is typing the search querry in.

I would not register either because having the keyword phrase you want in the domain URL is not going to help you. It's going to hurt you.

[zerocool7]

I always try to keep the domain name as short as possible, even if it does not match exactly what my website is about.
Especially after google's EMD (Exact Match Domain Update) keywords in your domain name do nothing except maybe help someone remember it easier but with all those dashes and the length it would still be hard. Remember you can always go for a .net or .org.

[James]

There continues to be a lot of misunderstanding about Google and exact name domains, like there is about duplicate content.

What Google, through Matthew Cutts, said directly was that exact name domain names would not continue to get the same advantage as before, not that they would not get any. He certainly did not suggest that exact name domains would be a detriment as is commonly suggested.

He also noted that in this particular case they would actually be having real people check out sites to see if they were really focused on the topics indicated by the name and that that would be taken into consideration in how much weight the exact name was given. (Practically speaking, with the millions of sites out there I would personally question how extensive that would be.)

Think about it. If someone searches for CNN they would not want Google to downgrade the very site they were looking for in favor of one that just mentions them a lot.

[zerocool7]

There continues to be a lot of misunderstanding about Google and exact name domains, like there is about duplicate content.

What Google, through Matthew Cutts, said directly was that exact name domain names would not continue to get the same advantage as before, not that they would not get any. He certainly did not suggest that exact name domains would be a detriment as is commonly suggested.

He also noted that in this particular case they would actually be having real people check out sites to see if they were really focused on the topics indicated by the name and that that would be taken into consideration in how much weight the exact name was given. (Practically speaking, with the millions of sites out there I would personally question how extensive that would be.)

Think about it. If someone searches for CNN they would not want Google to downgrade the very site they were looking for in favor of one that just mentions them a lot.

Right I guess what I was trying to say is its not as important as it once was. I personally would not settle for a spammy looking domain name just because of the keywords though.

[James]

I personally would not settle for a spammy looking domain name just because of the keywords.

Which is a very good point. Many people choose terrible domain names, which is unfortunate. Many sound "spammy" as you suggest. A lot of others just sound ... (you fill in the blank). I do not know of a single word that I can think of. I don't like to say dumb or weird or whatever, but they are not names that would likely convince anyone that they are professional enough to be someone to buy anything from.

No one factor is the all-in-all for search and never has been, there are dozens. The domain name applies primarily to the home page where writing good h1 headings applies to the SEO for each page and each page is a separate item for search; other pages with long tail keywords are where most traffic comes on most (not all) sites.

It is important to have good keywords for your pages, but if you cannot come up with a nice sounding domain name with your main topic as keywords I think it is better to use a brandable term like Sitepoint, Google, Amazon and other did or use a more general name as a domain name and get your SEO on the home page from the title, etc.