When you start out as an online affiliate you of course need to register a domain name for your site. This should not be done carelessly as the domain name will play an important part in deciding your success as an affiliate.
“A keyword name is name designed to make your site hit well in the search engines. The domain name is very important if you’re looking for good search engine results. It needs to be informative and consistent with the way people actually do their searches.”
Choosing a domain name
The first thing you have to decide is what kind of name you want for your affiliate site. There are two ways to go – you either pick a brand name or a keyword name.
A brand name is a name which is recognizable and easy to remember, without necessarily revealing very much about the site and what it actually contains. Brand names must be short and catchy to be effective and give your site value.
If you have a strong brand name people will be more inclined to return to your site after their first visit. It will also make it easier to deal with potential partners within the business of your choice.
A keyword name is name designed to make your site hit well in the search engines. The domain name is very important if you’re looking for good search engine results. It needs to be informative and consistent with the way people actually do their searches. Having the right words in the wrong order in your domain name is not worth very much.
The ideal is of course to combine a brand name with a keyword name, but that’s not easy to do. The best names in most business areas have already been taken, and the smartest thing for a new online affiliate is to focus on either a brand name or a keyword name.
Finding your domain
There are many different domain name registry services available where you can look for a suitable name for your affiliate site. The prizes are generally affordable – you can actually register a .com domain for as little as $10.
But what if you have decided on the perfect name, only to find that it’s already occupied? It’s frustrating, but there is no reason to give up right away. There are so called after market services available, through which you can get in contact with the owner of the domain name, and hopefully buy it for a reasonable prize.
In some cases the domain name will have expired, meaning that it’s up for grabs once again. That can blessing or a curse when it comes to SEO.
.com is the way to go
A .com address is generally the way to go for an online affiliate. This Top Level Domain (TLD) is known all over the world and considered to be the strongest one. A .com domain is extra important if you have picked a brand name for your site, since people most likely only will remember the name, and not the full address.
People generally type in .com when they don’t know the full address of a site, meaning that someone looking for your site could end up somewhere else if you don’t have a .com address.
If you, however, have picked a keyword name and found the exact right address you’re looking for, a .net or an .org domain will work fine (when it comes to keyword names people tend to remember the full address).
If your site is very informative an .info domain is acceptable as well. .biz addresses are not to be recommended.
Top 5 affiliate programs
As the domain market is growing larger and web hosting is becoming more common in business structures a strong affiliate tip is to advertise this lucrative niche through web hosting affiliate programs. Conversion rates are high and commission’s simply great.
