Search Engine Optimisation
Website Marketing and Promotion

Website Search Engine Optimisation Tips

Choosing a Website Name

If the Website name contains a well known brand, the Rankings will be good when a search is made on that brand name. A Website name should inform users of what the Website is all about, and is easy to remember. You may need to use hyphens between the individual words. Keep the Website name as short and as simple as possible.

If you would like visitors to return to your Website, then the selection of the Website name is important. But if you rely solely on the Search Engines to steer visitors to your Website, the naming of the Website becomes less relevant.

The competition for single and even two word Website names is fierce. There are now 1 million .au Website names registered. The perfect descriptive name for your Website is most probably already taken, and you need to be inventive. Use Google initially to see if the chosen name is unique. To check whether an Australian name is available, click on http://www.ausregistry.com.au/domain.php.

If local visitors are required, make sure that the Domain Name specifies the country. For example, use www.example.com.au instead of www.example.com, for a better chance of being found in Australia. It is best to acquire the .com.au, .net.au and .com versions – this will avoid the problem of domain hijacking and cybersquatting. You don't have to use all the domains, but if you do, you should avoid duplicate content. Duplicate content has a lower rating by the search engines.

It is not necessary to have Keywords in the Domain.

URLs explained

The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the address of a resource on the Internet. The URL contains the protocol of the resource, a host name, a domain name, and the address of the resource. For example, a page on the internet may be at the URL http://www.example.com/somefolder/default.aspx.

	http://	is the protocol
	www	is the host name
	example.com	is the domain
	/somefolder/default.aspx	is a pointer to a file on the server.

The Domain Name explained

A Domain Name is used to identify and locate a computer on the Internet. It is used to provide an easy-to-remember Internet address, rather than a number like 192.168.15.1.

The top-level domain can be two or three letters. Three letters indentifies the type of organization:

• .com (commercial)
• .edu (educational)
• .net (network operations)
• .gov (government)
• .mil (military)
• .org (organization)

• .au for Australia
• .uk for the United Kingdom
• etc

Page URL organisation

The structure of the URL for each page should be user friendly:

• Use Words in the URL relating to the content
• Select URLs that are easy to remember
• Avoid lengthy URLs
• Avoid generic names like Page1.htm
• Do not stuff the URL with Keywords