Choosing A Great Domain Name
Today's technological world has made it harder and harder for home businesses to retain their relevance in the eyes of their customers. Competition is fierce for customer attention, and name recall is of utmost importance-after all isn't your main goal to have potential customers remember your name and immediately associate your services with it? Major companies take full advantage of name recall, and build their multi-million dollar marketing techniques around the name. In order for you to also take advantage of your particular brand, you must put a lot of thought into choosing your domain name for your company website. Because most of us have such short attention spans with regard to searches and queries, your domain name is of particular importance-besides being the first impression potential customers have of your company.
Considerations when choosing a domain name
Your domain name should be catchy while still being relevant to your business-customers should be easily able to remember the name so they can locate and log into your website again and again. When choosing a domain name, it's advisable to first conduct an Internet search to determine the top keywords for your specific industry. If you have a home accounting business, for instance, see which keywords rank highly on the search engine list for comparable businesses.
Make a comprehensive list of potential keywords, then play around with them to come up with several different original domain names you feel would represent your business well. Remember that not only should your domain name be keyword-rich, but should also be unique so it will not be confused with other, similar business domain names.
Go for an easy-to-type domain name, without dashes, if possible. If your domain name is particularly hard to type in or remember, you could easily lose potential customers. One of your main goals is having people recommend your website to others, however if they can't remember how to spell or pronounce your website, it is unlikely there will be much word-of-mouth marketing for your business. Just like human beings, search engines also judge websites somewhat through first impressions. A domain name which is easy to spell and remember, and is industry-related will be much easier for web crawlers to notice. If you have a choice, shorter is always better when choosing a domain name, simply for the memorability factor.
Your domain name should offer potential customers a good idea of what your website is all about. With a few notable exceptions (Monster.com), most successful domain names tell the searcher where they are headed. (AutoTrader.com) If at all possible, always try for a .com extension rather than a .biz or .info or any of the other new extensions cropping up.
Check for availability
Once you've chosen a domain name which is catchy and easy to remember, you will have to search for availability. There are lots of web tools that make it easy for you to check for domain name availability, and once you determine the name is available, you can purchase it, generally for a year at a time. Once you have your domain name in place, you are good to go on designing your website-or you may decide to have a professional web designer handle that end of it. Either way, you have just made a valuable addition to your company.