Domain Name Choice Can Be Tricky But Profitable
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For newbies on the web, the question is “How do I start my own website?”. First: Strategic plotting and long term vision will serve you best in your choice of domain names. Careful consideration of your website’s domain name can pay off in dividends once your website is published online. Fine tuning your choice and thinking it through will help secure excellent placement with search engines and in the minds of your potential visitors/customers.
What if someone already owns the domain name you covet? Is it still possible to buy it? Maybe. It’s possible, but with conditions to consider. With some research and hard work you can possibly obtain the name from the current domain name owner. Instead, let’s check out some alternative strategies to get the domain name you want:
Hyphenated Names If the domain name you want is already taken, consider hyphenating it, as in taking billsplumbingsupplies.com and making it bills-plumbing-supplies.com. Is it always the best strategy? Maybe, maybe not. For example, if the domain name you want is already taken AND well known, most likely this is not a excellent thought, because most web surfers would likely just type the non-hyphenated version into their browsers and thus could end up at your competitor’s website. Not the desired result! Also, the longer the name you have chosen, the more tedious and error prone it becomes for the surfer to type in the name correctly, again foiling the chances that they will end up at your website. So, the shorter the better. Another school of thought: IF the web domain you want is already taken, IF the owner of the domain name won’t give it up, and IF the website associated with it is non-existent or poorly designed with low traffic, hyphenating the name might make sense after all. But be careful: the last thing you want is to cause internet domain name confusion because you have chose on a domain name registration that is so close to a major competitor’s name that you end up losing business to them.
Longer or Shorter? Domain names can be up to 67 characters long. At 63 characters, thelongestdomainnameintheworldandthensome
andthensomemoreandmore.com claims to be the longest domain name in the world, and it may very well be. Who would want to type it into a browser? My website is www.StartYourWebsiteToday.com and features a name that in a few words encapsulates the purpose of the site. Excellent name selection can be helpful also with search engine ranking. You will want to certainly keep the name as small and sweet as possible, but at the same time let the visitor know what to expect when he surfs to your website. Keep it as small as possible.
Brand Name or Generic Whether or not to call your website by a brand name or to make the name a more generic description of your business online is the question. If your business is known by a brand name, and it is a well known name, of course it is the best possible strategy to try to register that domain name. Budweiser.com is a site that is well known and gets a lot of traffic, even though there is nothing specifically in the domain name that says anything about beer. But because Budweiser is known all over the world as a beer brand, people know what they are getting when they surf to the website. If your brand name is well known, certainly try to obtain your brand name as a domain name. But if your company is Nike or Coca Cola or Budweiser don’t discount the thought of buying the domain name shoes.com or soda.com or beer.com if they are available as well. People often search the web using generic terms, more so even than brand names. A person is more likely to search the internet with generic terms like shoes or footwear or sneakers than to search by a single brand name, even one as huge as Nike. So if possible cover all the bases. You can have as many domain names as you want pointing to a single website, so the more generic terms you can buy that directly describe your business, the better. A generic name if your business is new or not yet well known can get fantastic results, if you can find a excellent one. To start your search for your own unique domain name, here is a link to a domain name search engine. Excellent website design starts always with the wise choice of a domain name.
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