How to Choose a Good Domain Name
To help your business grow by increasing your customer base through your website, you need to pick a website or domain name that does 5 key things.
1. Easy to remember
2. Easy to find which means easy to type
3. Includes reference to your product or service.
4. Is easily recognizable as you name so it can be trademarked to that competitors will not be able to use a similar domain name.
5. And last you need to be sure it is not already trademarked to someone else.
So, what makes a good domain name?
1. Good extension – that means the .whatever at the end. When someone is going to the web, they will most likely try your name with a .com, so as a web site owner, if at all possible you want to get a .com name for your web site.
2. Short – As in the length of the name. Ideally you will be less that 7 or 8 characters. Short names are easier to remember, tell someone about, to type, and let’s face it www.widgets.com looks a lot more professional that www.wesellthings.com.
3. Easy to spell – Test out your name choice and talk to people about it over the phone. If you can tell 4 or 5 people your name and have them email it back to you, then it’s probably going to work. But if even one of them screws it up, then you need something different. Also consider if there are 2 words in the name that the last letter of the first word is not the same as the first letter of the next word. People are not sure if they spelled it right. One thing you could do if you have to have the double letter is to buy both names and have the misspelling redirect to the correct one. Don’t use dashes or dots in the name.
4. Descriptive – As you are starting out with probably a very limited marketing budget, use a domain name that describes what your site is all about. People will know what you do just by reading your name. As this article is for a Real Estate venue, let’s talk about Realtors getting a domain name that is their name. You want a domain name that fills these 5 characteristics, but you might also want to buy a domain that is your name – like www.JoeBrown.com and redirect it to your web site. It has become a common practice in real estate to do this and your customers might look for you at your name, it just probably would not be a very good name for the search engines to find.
5. Keywords – a name will also Include keywords that describe your product or business. This will help you in some cases to increase your search engine rankings.
Who to buy from
When you go to buy a domain name it is important to work with a reputable company. Note that there is a huge growth in affiliate programs that allow resellers to open online companies reselling names for legitimate companies. Some Resellers are legitimate and will be there when you come back, but others are here and gone overnight. So before you buy, be sure to research the company you are using. You can find a full list of accredited companies http://www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-list.html
Domain Name Extensions
While we suggest that you should always go for a .com extension, you need to know a bit about other choices. The three most popular are “.com”, “.net”, or “.org”. You may find that depending on what your company does, you might also want to buy a different extension.
· COM is short for commercial and are the most widely recognized for businesses.
· NET is short for network and was originally designed for technical web sites.
· ORG is short for organization and is typically associated with non-profit organizations or associations or clubs.
You can also obtain a domain name extension that fit a specific country such as .ca for Canada or .jp for Japan.
Some web sites to check out
About the Author: Kim Tucker is the marketing manager for Mid-America Association of Real Estate Investors and several other real estate companies. She will be discussing marketing your company on the internet at the October 2009 MAREI meeting. Find out more about the meeting at MAREInet.com
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