Customizing SMF > Building Your Community and other Forum Advice
Name/Domain - should it be relevant to forum content?
ApplianceJunk:
--- Quote from: Old Fossil on June 10, 2012, 11:17:54 AM ---Would you name your forum The Bacon Boys if it were about a family of pigs?
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--- Quote from: Old Fossil on June 10, 2012, 11:24:35 AM ---Would you name the Domain the zoo if it were about young kids?
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Lol, I think them would be great domain names for them subject.
ChalkCat:
--- Quote from: Old Fossil on June 10, 2012, 11:24:35 AM ---Would you name the Domain the zoo if it were about young kids?
In other words ya want something related to ya forum.
BroadStar Radio is er a forum for my (soon to be live) internet radio station and MKAware is related to my forum about the area where I live.
Now do ya get my point?
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Thanks Fossy :) The difference is that my forum name isn't misleading, it's meaningless.
--- Quote from: Arantor on June 10, 2012, 11:26:04 AM ---The bottom line is that the site's name is branding attached to the site. It's an avenue for marketing. Does 'Google' as a name tell you anything about the content or services offered by the site? No, but it is a brand name and it has value in and of itself. Same, really, with this site - 'simplemachines.org' does not have any relation to the product offered here, but it is a brand name.
I have no idea what your forum is about, it's closed to guests, which means the odds of getting new visitors in the door is basically nil, but they'll find your site (when it's open) based on the content available to them and whether it interests them and they have anything to share.
For niches that are highly competitive, it can be pretty important to have a domain name with key words related to the content in it, but I'm guessing that's not quite so much the case here, and that you should probably leave the name alone.
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Thank you Arantor, that's exactly the way that I was thinking. Unfortunately my forum has to be closed for now due to political reasons with the other forums that have already bought up all the most intuitive domain names and who have already had squabbles among themselves about the similarity in names. That to me is another good reason for keeping our domain meaningless - it keeps us out of their squabbles and enables us to protest that we are not trying to compete with them. We accept that we will never be the main forum on the subject, but we do hope to attract the right quality of members that we will all love and enjoy our forum as much as we founder members already do :D
JohnS:
If your forum remains closed it does not matter.
But if you want search engines to find it based on the theme of the forum then it should have a relevant name in the domain. For example everything else being equal if the word searched for is in the domain name you will rank higher that if it is not. If you do decide to go for a domain name that does not contain suitable search words then at least put it in a subdomain or folder that does have relevant terms.
But there are many ways to improve SE ranking but it will require just that little more effort to get better ranking that sites that have relevant words in the domain name or within the folder structure.
Arantor:
That might be true, if it weren't for the fact that it's entirely possible to rank #1 for keywords that aren't in the URL at all...
OK, so I just did a search for 'Arantor' on Google. arantor.org is now the top answer but before I bought arantor.org, the highest match was this site. In fact, of the top 10, 8 of them are solely down to me. That's branding for you.
K@:
You could always spilt the difference, Nova.
sabrinarife.com?
tenerinova.com?
saberifeanova?
sabrinavoastenerifeweirdness.com?
Or summat?
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