This is all well and good, but chances are that if you are targeting a competitive keyword phrase, the domain is gone for the .com version of that phrase. Other endings that we like include .net and .org. If we cannot get a .com, .net or .org site, then we look at creative ways to get the phrase we want.
One such trick is using a hyphen. So redwidgets.com is taken, how about red-widgets.com? This works well for longer keyword domains, where you can use the hyphen as a natural break point. An example of this may be Myfreecredit-report.com. The hyphen looks like it belongs there, and does not detract from the domain name appearance.
Another way to address this is to simply add a modifier. So instead of redwidgets.com, you can add new, making it newredwidgets.com. You can get creative here, adding before or after your keyword phrase, so maybe redwidgetshelp.com. The goal here is to keep your keyword phrase joined. You would not want to add your modifier in the middle of your keyword phrase, so rednewwidgets.com would not be ideal if you want to target “red widgets”.
Finally, here is a neat trick we came across. These are stop words, and usually they are ignored by Google in domain names. You can insert these stop words into your domain name, and have the same impact as having an exact match domain name. The stop words we are aware of are:
The
With
And
By
For
A
An
Of
In
On
Are
Be
Into
If
Which
So using these stop words with our red widgets target phrase, you could register a domain name of onredwidgets.com, intoredwidgets.com, forredwidgets.com, etc. and still have the desired result of an exact match domain in the eyes of the search engine.
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Chris operates a