Domain name help needed

[annettemarie]

Right now, I have my business parked in one place (and the name isn't easy to remember) and my blog another. One of my goals this year is to get my business and blog connected and to have one domain name for them both. Right now, my blog is Natural Childhood, but I think I just want to change it all to Seasons of Joy.

I went to godaddy.com and seasonsofjoy.com and seasonsofjoy.net are both taken (even though when I plug them into my browser, the first one doesn't exist, ) and I'm not willing to pay $60+ to get it.

So, do I go with a different name, or a different dot thingie (org, info, biz, I don't know exactly what they're called)

This is probably the first of many questions on this topic. I don't know all the ins and outs of this forum, so forgive me if I posted anything I wasn't supposed to.

[Ame]

you could do:

seasons-of-joy.com

otherwise I'd go with SeasonsOfJoy.org

[beadmama]

What about theseasonsofjoy.com ??

I had to add a "the" to my business website to get it.

[janasmama]

Definitely stay with .com IMO...that is what most people remember and if anyone ever sees your website advertised somewhere they will remember the domain name and most likely automatically add the .com to the end without even thinking about it.

Even when I type .com is auto-piloted into my fingers

.org is usually for non-profits, I wouldn't recommend that.

Doing the hyphens in between is a good idea. My DH is an SEO (search engine optimizer) and adding hyphens is usually the default when a domain name is taken, so long as it doesn't make it too long.

The only other idea I have to to make it SeasonOfJoy.com (making seasons singular)

[janasmama]

FWIW: dh recommends that you buy all of the extensionsrelated to your domain and redirect them all to your .com

that way if someone mistypes they still get to your site and you are just securing your biz name on the internet

eta: last time we made a godaddy purchase i googled 'godaddy coupon code' and I can't remember the discount and we were buying a few domains but it saved us about $12

[annettemarie]

Thanks for the ideas! I can't afford to buy all the related ones (and seasonsofjoy.net is taken right now) but it's something to think about.

[Mama Dragon]

I was told not to use hyphens because of some arbitary Google rule (still haven't found facts), but consider this: There's 340,000 results for "garden of eatin" on google (my garden's blog name) and my blog (garden-of-eatin.com) is always on the first page, usually right under gardenofeatin.com

Hyphens aren't as friendly, but they'll do. Make sure your other SEO is good and you'll be fine.

[Ame]

I had the same experience...I heard hyphens were bad BUT my sites that have hyphens have no problem being on the first page of google for their keywords.

[Kristine233]

I dont think hyphens are bad SEO wise. I think they are just bad because people don't remember to put them in and its harder to say blah(hyphen)blah(hyphen).com Easier to mistype.

[mama_mich]

I would stay away from hyphens simply bc in my opinion they are hard to type / remember as a customer. They also don't look as appealing in your company marketing. What does the one seasonsofchange web site handle? If it is anything like yours I would come up with something new entirely. I feel like you've got something bigger and better growing in your head!!! The domain name is important but whats even more important is the ad words you choose.