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I heard a radio advertisement the other day for a website that featured unique hand crafted items that interested me. I wanted for the website address, but when the website address took ten minutes and several backslashes, dashes and dots I gave up and figured why bother.

If you are looking to boost your efforts in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies you may take a look first at your website address.

The advertisement I heard was most likely due to either a free or coopable web host that provides a place for the store to exist, but includes their website information followed by the sub domain for the business.

It could be that your website needs a makeover or you may even want to abandon your current design and start over using SEO strategies.

Spend some time at your favorite domain registry and look at website names that match your business. If you can't find a domain that's an exact match for your business then you can always focus on some of the primary product or services you carry.

There was a time when purchasing a domain was expensive, but the price in many cases is now less than ten dollars per year. There is no reason to have a long website address.

Even if you have a free website that will allow you to place your site on the web without a domain name you should purchase a domain that matches your business and use 'redirect' to allow customers, and search engines, to find you under the new and simplified address.

This step makes sense for start-ups as well as those seeking to redesign existing sites.

Because your site can be promoted in off line applications such as business cards as well as print, audio and video advertising it is important to keep things as simple as possible. Search engines seem to favor short, meaningful web addresses when they make an assessment on site rankings.

If you were a brick and mortar store you wouldn't name your company http://knickknacks.onlinemart.net/ornaments - would you? So, why make it hard for your customers and search engines to find you online?

Many SEO experts will recommend a site that is developed this way be redeveloped and the old site abandoned. The new site should be developed with proven SEO strategies. The old site can do very little to help you with SEO. When customers see or hear the length of your web address they will likely translate the sub domain listing as a 'cheap' company and avoid a visit.