After a long time of inactivity on this Blog, I just got started again.
Coming back to you while setting up a new Joomla 1.5 website to write some stuff about finding your best domain name.

First of all, did you do your homework on finding the right keywords?
You will need them in this process, or not :-)

You see, there a two ways to go about this domain name searching, one is to incorporate your main keyword in the domain name, like -SEO for instance.
The other one is to look for a domain name that is short and sweet and easily to remember.

Using Keywords in Your Joomla Domain Name

Best option of course would be to have both… like joomlaseo.net which is short, easy to remember and contains the two main keywords Joomla and SEO.
Problem with this now would be that Joomla! is more protected than before and the use of Joomla in a domain name should be approved by the Joomla.org website.

This is just an example of how you need to think about using a brand name in your domain URL.
Amazon for instance and Google will contact your and start asking you to give that domain name to theme since they are the holders of this registered trademark.
So be careful if you want to do that, or get permissions first!

Better is to look for a domain name that is simple and gets the right idea and stickiness to it, like alledia.com which is short, sounds good an is through its website content now seen as one of the best sources for Joomla SEO.

As you can see, there is no Joomla and no SEO in the domain name itself, it is the content that works to boost its visitors and rankings in the SERPs.

Google doesn’t care much about domain names Yahoo and Live.com however still give you some points for having keywords in your domain.
I have a website about Network Documentation (I am an ICT Manager in my Daily work…)  and it is ranking nr one in Live.com and nr three in Yahoo, just because of the domain name….

I checked Google as well, but could not find it n the first 10 ! pages… so I need to do a lot of work there (its a Drupal site and I am still learning SEO for Drupal as I go along)

Did you also see the main competition? and yes, networkdocumentation.com was already taken so they have a head start on me.
For my own domain name, I had to do a re-inclusion request at Google, since it was a spam site before I got it.
So here is a tip: if you have found a nice domain name and it is free! (check that first with your hosting provider) go to www.archive.org and use the “Waybackmachine” tool to see if it was used before and how it looked like. That is how I found out why I couldn’t get it into Google at all in the first place.

Short and sweet Domain names

You could also do some brainstorming sessions to get spunky names or if you are trying to build a brand on the Internet use that brand name.
Like Alledia or Hummerbie as a simple example.

Just make sure the names are short and use a good keyword rich title for your website, since you now want people to use link to you with the keyword you target.
Mostly they will use the title of you site to create a link. So for this Blog you could link to Joomla SEO Blog but you also could use that same link title to link to Joomla SEO Blog ;-)

Use your imagination and you will see how creative you really can be once you start throwing your ideas on a white-board or a piece of paper (electric ones work oké too).

if you want to go into the deep end and want tons of websites or if your customers asks you to help them, you could buy this book Killer Domains from Daily Blog Tips.

Domain Extensions

A short paragraph on domain extensions or tld’s , you know, the endings of a domain name?

There are a lot of them and it looks like there are going to be even more if all plans as expected.
The best ones for an international market are .com .net .org which are simply the bests tld’s.
But they could be taken and you need to venture out to other tld’s or choose an other name.

.info is not that good since some people think if you use that it is a spam site (I wonder why..)
You could also look at some foreign ones like .tv (expensive) or .it but those are just gadget like domains.
.mobi does work very well if you target mobile users.

What works best in extensions is to choose a tld that is locale to the market you want to target.
I use a .nl tld for my dutch web websites and that works great.

In conclusion: look at your competitors and what they use, look at your keywords list and be creative in finding that domain name that works for you!

P.s. If you have some great ideas on how to ease this process, don’t hesitate to throw them into the comments.

Want to read more? Check out Joomla & SEO Blog.

You now I do like Blogs… I write a few my self, and read a lot of others as well.

On new Blog that definitely goes into my Netvibes Joomla tab is this one from the Joomla developers, Developer Team Blog 

They will Blog about writing, seeking advice, coding and lots more, so as they say, it is a great way to stay in touch with the Joomla 1.6 development action.

And as Barry North already pointed out in one of his recent posts, the Blogs are now on Joomla 1.5 native with a social bookmarking footer instead of the old JD_WP WordPress based component.
Which brings back to mind that you really can use Joomla for Blogging but there are still some things that need to be ported to Joomla 1.5 native before it really would be a great Blogging platform.

But for the Joomla Developers Blog, content is the key! And it will be easy to keep up since they do offer an RSS Feed (No, not just yet via Feedburner, but maybe in time…)

For now, keeping my RSS feed open to new blogpost and looking forward to new improvements in the SEO Field.

Want to read more? Check out Joomla & SEO Blog.

If you have read this Blog for a Longer period of time (or have gone through the Sitemap..:-)) you might have read about the DS Syndication Component in my post Overcoming the Joomla RSS Feed Problem Well, there is a new version of this component since August of this year and I must say it is better then before! Putting in multiple categories in to one Feed. Not limited to the Frontpage any more.. choose to show HTML, Images or not in your Feed, using your special images. You can create multiple feeds with different categories and different images for the feeds. There is also a module that can show each of these feed images to subscribe to or just the ones you selected Running your Feeds through Feedburner I always like to run my Feeds via Feedburner, because they have some great options! So for my new website a used the DS Syndication component to get two separate Feeds And I have written a Tutorial for you on how to use the DS Syndication Component and where to find it! You can find it on Improve you Joomla RSS Feed and if you don’t know why you should have Feeds? Read Why Every website should have a Feed

Want to read more? Check out Joomla & SEO Blog.

Here is a Little tool I use to keep up with al the news that comes out on Joomla!, Joomla Components and Blogs…

I hope you already use it, if not, then this post is for you.

It is called Netvibes and it saves me a lot of time… so could you.
You can create an account for free with Netvibes and just try it, it won’t cost you a thing, just time (very precious) but in the end it will save you time.

There are lots of things you can do with Netvibes, like organizing your feeds like the Joomla Blogs onto one Tab.

But you can also work with your own favorites, Flickr Foto’s, Alexa rankings, Gmail,Yahoo mail, yes even POP3 mail accounts, all on one website, organized with tabs, or however you like it, just drag and drop the content you want in the place you want!!.

Isn’t that great, so Web2.0.. and from a Search Engine or Traffic building tool point of view….
Build a tab with all your favorite Joomla Blogs and Websites (including yours) and publish it on the Netvibes EcoSystem to share it with other Netvibes users.

It is one of the best tools I use to keep Informed on-line, and you can access your page from any Internet connected PC, just login!

You could also try the “Personalized Home” pages of Google , or the one from Yahoo or Flake pages, but Netvibes is for me by far the best! Just go ahead and try it out….

P.s. If you want to use Personalize Google pages, Gmail is now free for All !! Just go to www.Gmail.com and sign up.
Even if you don’t want to use it for mail, you still need it for the Google Webmaster Tools which are now out of Beta http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/

Want to read more? Check out Joomla & SEO Blog.

No, Not really af course..
You just have to work hard and in the right way, getting the technical stuff ready and write good quality content and lots of it.

But I just couldn’t resist..
There is a lot of controversie at the moment about some statements and counter statements in the SEO blogosphere where post are made about if Search Engine Optimization is Rocket Science or just simple to do if you follow the standard Optimization Guidelines (SEO Basics Explained)

My mind just flipped matching two post together, the previous one, and the one I am talking to you about below.

I am reading (and get RSS Feeds) form several SEO Blogs, one them is the http://www.alledia.com/blog/
And they have done an Interview with Barrie North and they started with the first question about how he got into Joomla and what’s his background.

I started out as a rocket scientist. No – really!

And Barrie mentioned that he started out as a Rocket Scientist and that he has his Masters in Physics!

If you have read this Blog for a while you should know that I think Barrie is one of the best in Joomla SEO.
So the combination is easily made :-)

But besides this little Mind spin of mine, the Interview gives you some idea about the person Barrie North and his drive to share his information on Joomla.

He also points out that SEO isn’t what it used to be, that “old school” seo is indeed dead.
And I must admit that I also think SEO is a really fascinating concept and I want to add that you need to analyse your results to improve your knowledge.
So in that sense you could say its a bit like science….

Further there are some quality links to SEO resources in the Interview, so just go and read it yourself, just follow the links to Interview with Barrie North.

Want to read more? Check out Joomla & SEO Blog.