Will My Domain Name Hurt My Page Ranking

The question asked was 'Will it hurt me as far as page ranking or anything else because I used the word "the" rather than "a" as part of my domain name?'

In this case, what happened was a simple error: using "the" rather than "a" as part of the domain name. The result was, in my opinion, a stronger, easier to remember domain name. It's the difference between "A Good Life" and "The Good Life." In general, the more specific a name is, the easier it is to remember.

But typos aren't always so forgiving; there's a huge difference between " t-e-h " and " t-h-e " so you'll want to double-check for spelling errors before you click the button to register your domain.

Will an error such as using "the" rather than "a" as part of the domain name make a difference in search engine ranking?

No, it won't.

Search engine page ranking is based on the "Keywords" you use. You may be more familiar with the word "Tags", but "keywords" and "tags" aren't quite the same.

Keywords are the words that show up most frequently when you're writing about a specific topic. These are the words that you'll want to use in your "Meta Data" for search engines pick up.

Tags on the other hand, are more 'human' in nature. They're the words we would jot down on a page so we know what the page is about.

For example, I usually have a pencil at hand when I read so I can jot down a word that is significant to me. Maybe it's a fact I want to be able to find quickly, or a word I want to look up in the dictionary. The word I jot down in the margin is a "tag". I can flip back through the pages and at a glance find the specific page I'm looking for!

When setting up your domain name, you want to avoid using trademark names unless it's your trademark. That's tantamount to shooting yourself in the foot; you'd be setting yourself up for a law suit by the trademark owner. It's also advisable to avoid misspellings or hyphenated spellings of a trademark name as well as celebrity names . . . that is . . . unless you and the celebrity happen to have the same name. But if that's the case, they've probably registered that domain.

Published 12 January 2010