Website owners have been urged to select domain names which are short, memorable and keyword-rich.

Janine Popick, who is the CEO of email marketing company Vertical Response, has claimed that domains with these traits can draw far more traffic into a website than those without.

In an interview with The Huffington Post, she was especially to keen to discuss the importance of buying keyword-rich URLs from website hosting companies or other domain providers.

She said: "Work with the free Google Adwords Keyword Tool to get an idea of phrases and words people are searching for that are related to your industry. Incorporating one of these in your domain name will increase your chances of being found in organic search.

"For example, if your company creates widgets, you might get more search mileage by adding "widgets" to your domain name, like companynamewidgets.com."

Adding to these suggestions, an article from seo-cardiff.org.uk has discussed the importance of including the location of a business in its website URL. This could provide a further SEO boost because many web searches are done by location.

The use of hyphens was also championed for those who found that their ideal URL had already been taken by one of their competitors.