How important is the relevancy of your URL in SEO? For instance if I own a flower shop in NYC. Is it important to have NYCflowers.com instead of GregsTulips.com? How much consideration if any do search engines take in the URL when deciding placement?

Is it good to buy keyword variations of my domain name? Will that hurt my standings in search? I am considering buying other names but am not sure if this will hurt or help me. Thanks so much..

Technorati Tags: domain name, flower shop, relevancy, search engines, seo, variations

Here’s a fact for you, 85 to 95% of websites are found through a search engine. You may have the most incredible website on the Internet, but it will receive little or no traffic without search engine visibility and ranking. Can you imagine a billboard in the Sahara desert? Who sees it?
So, how will searchers find your website? What types of search engines could they use?

Search engines fall into two categories. The first is referred to as natural, organic or standard. The second is called pay-per-click, paid inclusion or paid placement.
Natural, organic and standard are interchangeable terms describing a search engine that bases its search rankings on a ranking algorithm. The algorithms involve a number of criteria and parameters, all relating to the content of the website, the website’s size, the number of incoming links to the website, and the content’s relevancy. You will hear terms such as keyword relevancy and keyword density to describe various components of the algorithms.

http://www.squarepegweb.com/blog/view/Know_About_Search_Engines__PayPerClick

Technorati Tags: algorithm, algorithms, billboard, density, inclusion, interchangeable terms, parameters, pay per click, relevancy, sahara desert, search engine visibility, search engines, search rankings, traffic