Not sure if the choice of domain name for your website really matters?

 

IT DOES!!

 

Your domain name is like your street address. How will customers find you if they don’t know where to look — or worse, if they go to what they think is your address only to find your company is not there? Here are nine tips to choosing a domain name for your business:

 

1.  Make it a dot-com –  In the United States, most people typing in a domain name will type “.com” by default.   With over 80 million registered URLs, the “.com” extension is by far the most popular, with “.net”, “.org”, and ”.info” lagging far behind in popularity.

 

2.  Short and easy to spell — Shorter is better.  A short URL is easier to remember and less likely to be misspelled than a long one.

 

3.  Company names and brand names — Whenever possible, register your company name as your main URL.  It’s what people usually try first when looking for your business website. You might also consider registering your product/service names as additional URLs.   You should also register your company and brand names across all the social media sites using UserNameCheck.com

 

4.  Keywords and household words — Some companies register industry-specific terms, common words or short phrases that your customers or prospective customers may commonly type into a browser.  This can generate ‘type-in’ and ‘direct navigation’ traffic to your website.

 

5.  Personal names — Register your own first and last name as your domain name/URL if you are a consultant, writer, or other professional whose reputation in your field is critical to drawing customers. 

 

6.  Be defensive with misspellings — Buy up common misspellings of your domain name.  That way, you don’t leave traffic on the table — and competitors won’t be able to buy the misspelled domains and siphon off traffic intended for your website.

 

7.  Protect your brand with other extensions — While the “.com” extension is the most popular, as a defensive measure consider also snapping up other extensions of your domain name.  Secure the .net, .info, .biz and similar extensions.  If you do business internationally, think about securing country extensions, also (such as .co.uk).

 

8.  Don’t forget mobile — With mobile devices becoming more popular, big brands and savvy entrepreneurs are starting to register and develop their .mobi sites specifically for mobile users.  You may have no plans to build out a .mobi site today,   but as mobile usage grows you may be glad you have that domain in two or three years.

 

9. Avoid long hyphenated domain names/URLs — if you use a hypenated domain name, you run the great risk of the domain name being miscommunicated offline…avoid them!

 

Andrew Hazen, a serial entrepreneur, is obessed with domain names and internet marketing; he is the Founder & CEO of Prime Visibility

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 25th, 2009 at 10:15 pm and is filed under Domain Names, Entrepreneurship, Internet Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.