• Section: Increase Traffic - Category: Domain Name
• Written by Halstatt Pires

Picking a domain name should be easy, right? Why, I'll just usemy business name. Not so fast, Sparky. A good bit of thoughtshould be given to selecting a domain name.

A Cautionary Note

Picking a domain name is like getting married. You are going tohave to stick with it till the bitter end. People the use yoursite will come to know it by the domain name. Repeat visitorswill often simply type in the domain name to get to the site,better known as "type in traffic". As an example, do you searchfor "Amazon" when you want to buy a book or do simply type inamazon.com? If Amazon were to change its domain name to Desert,there would be a lot of confusion. The same goes with yourdomain. Once you pick something, stick with it.

Your Choices

Well, the obvious choice is your business name, but it may notbe the best. There are four significant issues to consider.

First, is there something about your business name that makesusing it as a domain an unwise choice? This si

Double letter problems are a second issue that is entirelyunique to the Internet. What if Sams Salon wants to use itsbusiness name as a domain? The "s" at the end of first word andbeginning of the second can cause confusion. Is the domain nameSamssalon.com or Samsalon.com? Confusing your users is a bad wayto run a site.

The third issue concerns the nature of your site and searchengine optimization. If you are shooting for a particularkeyword phrase, you may be better off using that keyword phrasein your domain name. Google, for instance, looks at the domainname when evaluating a site. If the words in your domain nameare spaced with dashes, many believe it will help in the rankingprocess. This is why you see so many xxx-xxxx-xxx.com domainnames on the net. If your business focuses on a very specificarea, strong consideration should be given to using relevantkeywords in your domain name.

Finally, your domain name should end in ".com" and I don't wantto hear any argument or see any rolling of the eyes. The simplefact is that when people think of sites, they always type in..com. Yes, there are other extensions and .us, .net, .biz, etc.,may seem unique, but it kills your traffic. Pavlov and his dogexperiments had it right. People have been mentally conditionedto type in .com, so don't select any other ending. If you do, asmart competitor will register the .com version of your name toget some free traffic. If you are really lucky, a porn site willdo it!

Take a breath before you select a domain name. Like a spouse, itcan be either a good or bad choice.

--End--

Write comment

Name: Email:   Website: Title: UBBCode:         -color-aquablackbluefuchsiagraygreenlimemaroonnavyolivepurpleredsilvertealwhiteyellow -size-tinysmallmediumlargehuge     Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

Comments

Add New Search

3.22 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."