The domain name is a very important part of setting up any web site. Doing a little research before creating a domain name will pay off when it comes to getting traffic to the site once it is online. The Google keyword tool is a good place to find great ideas for a domain name. Start by typing the topic of the planned web site into the keyword tool. The tool will produce a list of keywords and keyword phrases related to the topic. It will list the number of monthly searches for each keyword. Look for keywords or keyword phrases which get a large number of searches every month. Try to craft a domain name using one of these high volume keywords or keyword phrases. Keep in mind not to choose a keyword phrase that is to generic. While it is wise to choose a high search volume keyword it is not wise to choose one that has such high competition that the site would have little chance of getting a good page ranking.

After selecting a couple possible keywords to use in the domain name do a Google search on each keyword. Look at the first page of results. On the top right corner of the page will be the total number of results found for the keyword. If this total is under a million the keyword is a diamond in the rough and one that should be heavily considered for use in the domain name. If the results show over one hundred million it may be wise to look for a different keyword.

Each search results page will also have two columns of results the column on the right is the paid results and the column on the left is the organic or spidered results. It is good to see results on the right because that means that people are paying Google money to advertise for that keyword and is a good indication that there is money to be made using the keyword. The results on the left are equally important. If these results show a bunch of corporate listings it will be hard to beat them out of their ranking because they are probably paying for search engine optimization and have deep pockets. If however, the results show a bunch of blogs, press releases, articles, or hub pages, getting a good ranking would be much easier.

Once a good keyword has been found it is time to go to a domain registrar and get a domain name. There are many lines of thought on buying a domain name. Sticking to the basic rules is usually the best policy. If at all possible buy a dotcom name. Shorter is better. No special characters in the name.

At the domain registration site a domain name search box will be presented. Start by typing the keyword or keyword phrase in this box and hit enter. In a couple seconds the results will pop up indicating if the name is available. It will also list any extensions besides dotcom that may be available. More than likely the raw keyword will not be available or if it is it is not something that would make a good domain name, but it is a great starting point.

For example lets say the keyword being used is "blue ants" and the domain name is not available. The best choice would be to add a word after the keyword to create another possible domain name. If blue ants are going to be sold at the site the word "here" might be added to the end of the phrase to make a domain name blueantshere.com. a few other possibilities would be global, experts, news, and expo. A word could also be added to the front of the phrase. Words like get, see, buy, and your could easily be added to create a good domain name.

Including keywords in a domain name will help to get a website higher rankings in the search engines. It is important to remember that the site content will also need to incorporate these key words if this strategy is going to be effective. These are things that should be considered in the initial planning stages of any web site. It is much easier to build a site around good keyword phrases then to try and stuff them in once the site is already built.