Your Web Site Domain Name
What’s In A Domain Name?
Everything. Your Internet domain name is analogous to a business name in the brick and mortar world.
Having a clever, catchy domain name can draw people in just as it does in any business.
Now, if you are setting up your current brick and mortar business
on the internet, hopefully your current business name will be
available. If it's not, then you may consider adding prefix or suffix
that will distinguish it. For instance, if it's a corporation, you
can add the phrase "corp" or "inc". If it's a
sole proprietorship, then usually a state/region phrase will do the
trick such as "fla" for Florida. However, keep in mind that
your domain name does not have to necessarily
be the same as your brick and mortar name.
Also, keep in mind that it’s not easy to change your domain name once you start marketing it by submitting it to search engines and having other sites use it in their links page.
Match Your Domain Name To Your Business
With the new capability of creating domain names with 67 characters, you have a good opportunity to purchase a name that really suits your business. Create a name that can show people, just by looking at it, what your business is about.
If you are building a sales web site, don’t mess with any other domain name suffixes other than “.com”. There are a slew of other domain suffixes and more to be created in the near future. However, everyone thinks of “.com” before “.net” or “.org”. Even most web browsers will default to a “.com” suffix if one is not entered. If you are using, or plan to use, a domain name suffix other than “.com”, you
are losing potential sales. Even worse, you are probably losing them to a competitor who has registered the same name with a “.com” suffix. Don’t let this happen to you!
Registering Names With Embedded Key Words
Search engines love URLs that are made up with key words. Think of your best keywords and phrases for your product or service and put them in your domain name.
For example, let’s say you performed a search for the keywords
“internet marketing” and received the following results:
http://www.xyz.com/grp/bobshomepage
http://www.moonstruck.com/~john/welcome.html
http://www.InternetMarketingMadeEasy.com
Which one would you go to first? Obviously you’d click on
InternetMarketingMadeEasy.com. The domain name lets you know that
this site is definitely related to your search.
Another item that search engines like are hyphens. For example:
www.discount-chritsmas-gifts.com
www.discountchristmasgifts.com
Notice that the example contains the same name with and without hyphens. That’s because search engines prefer URLs with hyphens and visitors don’t – so be sure to register both!
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