Selecting the right domain name is one of the most important
business decisions you can make. When you have a business online, you are
competing in a global economy with millions of other websites.
The latest information from Internet World Stats counted
over 1 billion Internet users in 2007. According to Rich Miller of Netcraft, an
Internet monitoring company that has tracked Web growth since 1995, "There
are now 100 million Web sites with domain names and content on them." Of
the 100 million websites, about 47 million of them are active sites and
competing for visitors.
Here are some tips to follow in choosing a domain name that
makes it easy to find your business on the Internet:
(1) Choose an easy to spell domain name.
It does no good to have a website, if no one can find you
because your domain name is too difficult to spell.
Last week I was talking to someone and asked her who the
company was that designed her website.
She told me the name of the company, and it was some very strange name
that didn't make sense to me. I had to ask her twice what the name was and I
then asked her to spell it for me. Unfortunately, she couldn't even spell the
name because she said the company had a strange spelling, and she could never
remember it. I then asked her for the
website address, and she couldn't remember how to spell that either. I ended up
trying to guess a couple different spellings for the website and never did find
the company.
Don't get cute with your website name or for that matter,
the name of your business. You may think it's clever to spell fenikz instead of
Phoenix, but
don't expect anyone to find your website.
I speak from experience on this topic. When I first started my business I was
completely ignorant about choosing a business name. I thought it would be fun to have a business
name that was a play on words. So I
chose "Howe Write You Are Business Communications."
My last name is Howe, and I am a writer. So I chose the domain name
howewriteyouare.com.
When I would tell people my domain name, this is what they
heard: howrightyouare.com. They spelled the domain name exactly as they heard
it and the only way they would get the correct spelling is by looking at my
business card. I soon figured out what a
dumb mistake I made and changed my business name after the first year.
(2) Choose the right extension for your domain name.
When you go to register a domain name you have a choice of
.com, .net, .org, .biz, and some other rarely used extensions. Unless you are a
nonprofit, only choose a .com extension for your domain name.
The reasons for this are very simple. When people go to search for a website, they
assume it is a .com. If you have any other extension, they will end up at the
wrong website.
The other reason to have a .com extension is that search
engines will search first for a .com website. For example, a browser will look
for quiltingtips.com before, it looks for quiltingtips.net.
Let me talk a moment about strategy when it comes to
choosing a domain name extension. If you
don't want a competitor to have your domain name, then purchase all the
extensions of your domain name. In other
words, if my domain name was going to be quiltingtips.com, I might also
purchase quiltingtips.net, quiltingtips.org, and quiltingtips.biz. This way, I
insure that my business domain name will not have competition from a nearly
identical domain name.
(3) Choose misspelled domain names.
If you have a business name that you know is easy to
misspell, consider purchasing the domain name with the common misspelling. Both names can be set up to point to your
website, so it doesn't matter if your domain name is misspelled, people will
still find you.
In my previous example, I talked about my original business
name and the problems that I had with the unusual spelling of my business name. If I had not wanted to change my business
name, a simple solution for me would have been to purchase the domain name
howrightyouare.com and have that point to my website.
An example of a well-known business that is using this
technique is Verisign. If you type in verasign.com or verisign.com you will get
to the correct website.
Conclusion
Your domain name is your Internet identity. Make sure your
domain name selection is not an afterthought.
Take the time to thoroughly analyze your options and choose a domain
name that promotes your business or product online.
About the Author:
Michelle Howe, MBA, president of Internet Word Magic,
specializes in writing irresistible copy for websites. Transform the way you do
business. Visit her website at
http://www.InternetWordMagic.com
for a FR^EE chapter download of her new book “Turn Browsers into Buyers" and
FR^EE report, “The Five-Step Plan to Article Success."
