What?s in a name? Everything! A domain name is the first thing
that pops up when people are exploring through a search engine
or directory, so it?s important to come up with something clever
that also spotlights the focal point of your business. By
?clever,? we don?t mean a silly pun that will cause your face to
turn red with embarrassment in a year or two after the novelty
has worn off. Your domain name will be your ?Internet identity,?
so it will be helpful if it closely matches the name of your
business, product, or service to make it easier for people to
remember and find you; thereby distinguishing you as leader in
the marketplace or business.
Every time you send out an email you will be promoting your
business because your domain name will also be used as your
email address, thus making it easier for customers to remember
you by. Plus, when you?re sending out emails to someone who
isn?t familiar with your business, they may intrigued enough to
take a closer look at the website, especially if the name is
catchy and interesting.
An additional marketing strategy will be to print your website
on everything related to your business - stationery, business
cards, mailers, advertisements, signs, etc. So the idea is to
come up with a domain name that has obvious business and/or
commercial potential.
HOW DO I CHOOSE MY DOMAIN NAME?
Ah! Good question and we?re glad to provide that answer for you.
It?s going to require a little brainstorming, but you may be
pleasantly surprised with some of the ideas you come up with.
Ask co-workers, friends and associates, as well as family
members, to jot down names and words they think best describes
your business. Browse through circulars and look at classifieds
and magazine ads to see what headlines grab your attention.
You can even use your own name for your domain if it is easy to
spell and remember, but not lengthy. This would be helpful in
establishing recognition in the name-face marketplace. Of
course, if you have a common name, chances will be that someone
else has beaten you to it. In that event, you might be able to
use your initials combined with your last name.
Consider your target market and do a search on different types
of categories in your business to see what keywords consistently
pop up. One young entrepreneur did this very thing from his
college dorm room, by creating an online marketplace to buy and
sell unused event tickets called TicketAdvantage.com. This
venture grew so quickly, that by the time Adam Witty (founder
and CEO) graduated from college, his former hobby and now
full-time business, had blossomed into a partnership with a
national promotional baseball tour across America.
While you are thinking about names, have some fun and go to
NameBoy.com. This is a free tool that is entertaining to play
around with while searching for a keyword generated domain. It
will tell you what is available and what has been taken, while
offering a variety of other suggestions.
KEEP IT SHORT!
We caution you to try and keep the domain name as short as
possible, as this will make it easier for people to remember
you, while lessening the chances of errors when someone is
typing it into their browser. Ideally, if you had a casual
encounter with someone while discussing your business and/or
products and you told them your website address, you would want
them to be able to remember it until they get back to their
office to jot it down.
For instance, Bavoy is an organic food distributor. Although
they have a bavoy.com website; their main website has a domain
name that features their number one product, healthyhearth.com.
Which site do you think gets the most hits? The second one,
because (1) it is named after their main product, (2) the name
is intriguing, and (3) it?s much easier to remember and spell
correctly. Plus, visitors are automatically redirected to their
main Bavoy.com site. Neat trick, huh?!
For primary domain names, it?s best to keep the name to 20
characters or less. If you want to have a long domain name (up
to 63 characters) for search placement purposes, make this your
secondary domain with a redirect to your main site.
EXCUSE ME, IS THIS NAME TAKEN?
With hundreds of thousands of domain names already registered,
don?t be surprised if you find that your choice of domain has
been taken. It can be difficult to come up with a fitting name,
so it will be helpful it you have several to choose from. When
you have a short list of names, put them in order of favorites
and look them up on a search engine to make sure they are not
already taken. Then, go to the site you plan on using to
register your domain and look the name up again to confirm it
has not been taken.
DOMAIN EXTENSIONS
The big daddy of all the domain extensions remains .com, with
other popular extensions as .co, .net and .org. Country code
domains have been created to be used by individual countries as
they are deemed necessary. A popular, widespread example for the
United Kingdom is .co.uk or .org.uk.
During the Internet boom in the 90s, there was a great deal of
concern that the supply of available domain names would not be
adequate to support the rapid growth. Therefore, new extensions,
such as .info, .biz, .tv, .ws, and .cc were created to spread
out the pool of unique domains. However, it is not recommended
that you use these, unless you are purchasing them in
conjunction with your main domain. If you are using a lesser
known extension because the .com domain was already taken, there
is a great likelihood that your clients will forget the
extension and will type in the domainname.com instead of
domainname.biz, and be directed to a different site, or even
worse, your competitor. So stick with the more easily remembered
extensions such as myname.net or myname.com.
SO NOW WHAT?
Don?t wait another minute! Once you have found the perfect
domain name and you know without a doubt it is available,
register it before someone else snaps it up.
You can shop around for inexpensive places to register your
domain name, but I urge you to use caution. Make sure that the
company you are registering with has been around for a while,
because if they disappear overnight as some do, it may be
difficult to renew your domain name the following year and you
might lose it, which could be disastrous.
All registrars generally require the same type of information
when registering your domain name: Name of company or
individual; administrative contact; technical contact; billing
contact; DNS server settings; and payment information. If a
registrar does not ask for any registrant information, but skips
instead to the payment section, you might want to skip them.
There are some unscrupulous registrars that will fraudulently
register themselves as the ?registrant,? although the client may
be shown as the contact person, which means the registrars own
the domain name, not you. In any event, carefully read the terms
and conditions before proceeding.
Some registrars will offer packages, like registering your
domain name for free if you purchase a web hosting plan from
them. And some of these are really good opportunities, but
again, use caution when looking at these hosting plans and check
out their reliability and how long they have been around.
That?s it! You are now on your way to becoming a top-notch
Internet marketer and rapidly build and promote your business.
This is the fun part, so enjoy it!
About the author:
Charlene Davis is an experienced and published freelance writer
specializing in business, technical subjects, and e-commerce.
She is the coauthor with Jacquelyn Lynn on Make BIG Profits on
eBay: Start Your Own Million $ Business, Entrepreneur Press,
2005, and How to Start a Senior Services Business, an
Entrepreneur Media start-up guide. For more information, visit
her website at http://www.cdavisfreelance.com.
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