The Domain Name

• The Trademark Domain Name [e.g. Yallways, eBay, Yahoo, Joox, etc.]
• The Keyword Domain Name [e.g. searchengineoptimization-guide, freewebtemplates, unexplained-mysteries, etc.]

Here is how to choose whther you need one or the other or even both of these types of domain names.

• You need the TRADEMARK domain name if you are a major corporation whom is out to do some major nationwide or worldwide advertising as mentioned earlier because the domain name will help people to recall your website later without the need for doing any searching in the search engines once they have found your website for the first time.
• You need the KEYWORD domain name if you are simply providing information on the net (like this website) in which case people can simply bookmark it in order to refer to it at a later time. However the need for a simple trademark domain name is not necessary because you do not want people to think you are some amature trying to start a new trend. This is a turn off and people tend to stray away from sites like that because they are often referred to as 'Possible Spammers' who are just trying to corner the market on used up ideas.
• You need BOTH domain names if you are defining yourself with a specific business but at the same time provide a collection of information. (In other words you fall into both above categories but without the ability to hire on groups to do your SEO tasks for you)

About Sub-Domains

Subdomains are what you usually get if you sign up for a free hosting site on the internet. Often these will appear as:

• yourname.somewebsite.com
• www.somewebsite.com/yourname.

The problem with sub-domains is that they are "used". this means that they are not great for optimizing the search engine results because the main domain name is pretty much consistant with many other websites that that particular free host is giving space to. In other words, you may provide information on wild cats while another site is providing information on football teams and another site provides information on vehicles. The problem here is that your SEO tactics will always be based on the relavance of all site under that same domain name and thus a person seeking information on Jaguars are apt to run across the other two sites before reaching results on your website because Jaguars can relate to football teams, vehicles and wild cats. Over time the search engines have trained themself into taking the entire domain and placing it as a result based on the relavance of all keywords obtained through that domain name as a whole.

Short domain name redirects are also considered subdomains. They simply take a short domain name such as this.tv and allow you a domain name like yourname.this.tv making it appear as though you are using a short unique name. But in fact it is still a domain name issuing the same problems as mentioned in the previous paragraph.

the only alternative to optimising your website under a free host is by obtaining a new domain name. This can be done by purchasing one or finding a site that offers them for free. Do not be fooled though. If the domain name ends in two extention (yourname.ky.gov) then it is really a cleverly diquised subdomain. If you are unable to find a free host that allows you the ability to use a purchased domain name then don't worry. Most domain name providers allow URL redirect methods right in the domain name client control panel.