Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Domains for Your Business-Info

Choosing a domain name that really does not fit your website’s purpose or that contains letters that simply don’t play well when situated next to one another may leave you wishing that you had put a bit more effort into its selection. A savvy webmaster or website owner will go with a name that is simple yet describes what they do, while helping them to stand out from similar domains. Let’s look at best practices to employ when choosing a one for your business.
What’s Your Website About?
It’s certainly true that there are domain names out there that really make no sense unless you know the story behind them. Take twitter for instance. Twitter was well marketed in cyberspace by its creators – now the word “tweet” is actually a noun and a verb used to describe messages sent on its platform and the action of sending a message.
Chances are that you don’t have a huge budget; however, you can successfully spread word about your website online. Visitors to your website should be able to look at your URL in the search engine results page and determine what your website is about without any sense of confusion. Make sure that your domain name relates well to the products and services that you are selling, or potential customers may not take the time to click on your URL to see if you have what they need. They must be able to associate your URL with their own needs before you’ll ever get them “through the door.”
Broaden Your Scope
Let’s say you are selling muffins and discover that muffins-dot-com is available. You’re absolutely ecstatic because this name seems perfect. But what might be the perfect domain right now may not be the best when you broaden your product offerings to include breads, cookies and other baked goods down the road. When you start offering a wider range of products or services, will your business still thrive with muffins-dot-com? Well your muffins may sell well, but your other products may get lost in the shuffle. Think of future needs and leave some breathing room when selecting your domain name in order to stay relevant in the long term and not find yourself back at square one in the future.
Keywords Are Important
Fitting the keywords that will be used by your potential customers to find your website into your web address is an awesome way to become more searchable, so kudos to you if you can pull it off. Your website will be more easily found. If not, then you’re still okay, but never pick a name that is irrelevant to what you’re selling or that looks awkward when keyed in just to get your keywords in there.
Be Memorable
One of the most important aspects of choosing a great domain is to select one that is easy to remember. Unique, short, easy to remember, and easy to type will give your customers a name to associate with your website. An uncomplicated domain name that is simple to process in the mind is very crucial to making it easy to recall.
Snap up the Extensions
Nothing can create a crisis in the brand awareness department faster than having a successful website and then having some idiot grab the same domain but with different extension and build a similar site. Snap up all of the extensions to your website (including dot com, org, and net) while they are still available. It won’t cost that much more when registering and you won’t need to worry about problems arising in the future if someone takes the extension and interferes with your brand’s reputation.

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