Domain Name Changes for Google SEO

[callie47]

Ros, I've been freaking out since I read that letter from Colin McDougall on your blog... about the dashed domain names. As you can see, I have a dashed domain name - 3 of them actually - and now I'm freaking. Do I have to just cut my losses and buy 3 new domain names to replace these... Is it essential if I ever hope to get good rankings? (Just can't afford his book right now... gotta get yours first!)

The company I host my sites with charges $19.95 per domain name or to transfer, so I'm not thrilled about this, especially since I just paid for an upgrade to host 3 more domains with my hosting package a few days ago.

Hmmm... What to do... any advice is appreciated.

[Rosalind Gardner]

Sshhhhh.... Now, don't freak Callie!

I have a lot of dashed domains as well, and I'll hang on to them.

However, do consider this... 1-flower-gardening.com might have been a nice keyword lure for the SE's, but will your visitors remember it? Does it SPEAK to them?

If you are building for your visitor's, ie. building good content, sending a newsletter and building your brand, wouldn't calliesflowergarden or calliesflowergardening.com be more memorable?

Or something along those lines anyway.

Make your domain names unique and memorable and don't worry about the keyword 1 - keyword 2 or 1st-site-for-widgets.com crap that you may have picked up elsewhere, 'cause it is just that... proven crap.

Registration is cheap at GoDaddy.com and you don't need to pay a mint for hosting either.

Hope that helps!

Cheers,
Ros

[callie47]

Whew... Done freaking! Happy again

VERRRY good advice and I'll have to decide from this point on how to balance my domain names for my visitors memories and Search Engines spiders, depending on the site.

Thanks Ros!