Killer Domain Secrets Exposed!

A wonderful article I happened to come across…it’s major long but well worth the read!

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Every website needs a domain name. Example “WebBootCamp.com” is a domain name. Your domain is your website address, a.k.a. URL (universal resource locator). Should you use your company name for your domain? Maybe, maybe not. Is it memorable? Easy to spell? Does it contain keywords that relate to your business? For more considerations on choosing a domain, I’ve put together the following checklist.

Pick a memorable name. How catchy is it? Would the average person be able to remember just your website name, without looking through their bookmarks (if they have even bothered to bookmark it, that is)?

Make it easy to spell! Face it, most people can’t spell. Try to target for the masses when you pick your name. Think of everyone having a 7th grade education. Make it short, try for a two or three word domain. When possible, name your company the same as your domain name. Whether you actually add .com to your company’s name makes little difference.

Use keywords in your domain. Try services like http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/, https://adwords.google.com/select/tools.html, and wordtracker.com to see what people are searching for, in BIG NUMBERS, related to your subject.

Don’t use numbers or hyphens. These are easily overlooked or forgotten when people type in your domain. Unless you’re using a stand out combination like 911alert or 123homerepair, don’t go numeric. If you use hyphens, then every time you tell someone your domain, you have to say “it’s blah-blah-blah.com - with the hyphens”. This is not impressive, and you risk losing traffic to blahblahblah.com. You’re asking your potential customers to work harder, to remember tedious details about your name. Simplicity is important, because you want them to find you. You’re building a brand here.

Don’t buy any other extension except a “.com” This is the best branded domain extension, highly known and trusted. Any other extension is practically worthless, in my book. In addition to being first in the minds of the public, remember also that most people trying to find a company will put a com after that company’s name in their browser. It’s second nature to most of us. A .org can bring attention for non profits, but even most of those companies will try to purchase a .com as well.

Avoid running names together that end in a vowel and begin in a vowel. EXAMPLE: freeebook.com Also try to avoid having the second word start with the same letter as the last letter of the last word. These combinations can look weird, and are often likely to be misread or simply forgotten. By avoiding these two combinations, along with numbers and hyphens, we make sure our words (and our brand) will stand out.

EXAMPLE: WebmasterNow.com

Good For Starting Sentences, Not Domains

Avoid starting your name with THE, or A, if being used as the word A. EXAMPLE asimplehome.com - “a” is likely to be forgotten. While it is true that directory listings usually list alphabetically, search engines do not.

If you can come up with a catchy name starting with “a”, by all means, do so. You may find yourself first in the yellow page listings. Have a look there first, and see what the competition looks like. What are their names, how do they rank?

Now, here’s where it gets interesting. You’ll see that names starting with numbers get displayed first (for non paid listings). So the big question becomes, is yours the type of product or service that will do well from yellow page traffic? You must carefully weigh this against overall branding of your company.

You could of course, have more than one domain, and more than one brand for your company, but be careful about promoting the same sites with different names to the same search engines. You could find yourself banned from those search engines altogether.

Brand New?

Don’t pick your name as your domain name, unless you’re famous. Names aren’t keywords (won’t help your search engine rankings), and usually easily forgotten. Unless you’ve built a big brand around your name already, stick to a good key phrase! It is much easier to brand.

This entry was posted on June 15, 2008 at 2:33 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.