Important Things in Choosing the Perfect Domain Name
Posted by on June 11th, 2010 View Comments
Posted in SEO - Search Engine Optimization |
In today’s tech-savvy world, it has become harder for businesses to continue to remain relevant in the eyes of their customers. Except for other companies like Yahoo, Google and YouTube, there are simply too many websites and online companies today that are competing for each and every customer’s attention.
Ushering the Technology Age
Name recall is a concept wherein one entity aims to market its brand in such a way that people may remember and be associated with it. Marketers have continuously adapted to this concept and have used it to their advantage over the decades.
What do companies like Microsoft, Colgate, Coca-cola or General Electric have in common? They all have taken advantage of several savvy marketing techniques to be able to fully experience and enjoy the benefits of name recall. These are multi-national companies that have survived through the years and still remain on top of people’s minds.
The first step in achieving this goal of being relevant and remembered is to carefully choose a domain name. A domain name, also known as the URL, is the address with which visitors can type in in order to be directed to that company’s web page. URLs are relevant especially today where online users have a very short attention span with regards to their searches and queries.
Aside from the first impression that a good domain name will have to the customers, a good URL can also give first time visitors ideas on what to expect when they browse through your web pages. It can also help customers remember easily the web page and be able to recall it the next time they make a query about a particular related topic.
Things to Remember in Choosing the Right Domain Names for your Websites
The main purpose of a domain name is to make your site’s appear relevant in the eyes of your potential customers. Aside from this, a URL should also be catchy in a way that people can easily remember and will not have a hard time locating and logging into your website the next time.
Here are some things to consider in picking out the perfect domain name for your site:
1. Keywords!
The importance of relevant keywords cannot be stressed enough. In choosing a domain name, it is helpful for you to first search the Internet for the top keywords with regards to the industry you are in.
For example, you may be setting up a financial brokerage website. In this case, terms such as brokers, equity, and finance may be relevant to your decision of choosing the right domain name for your website. If you are a travel agency, it may be helpful to scour the Internet for keywords that rank highly on the search engine list like travel, booking, etc.
Once you have searched for these keywords, you can then start playing with them: mixing and matching; adding hyphens, prefixes or suffixes to come up with your own original web domain. Coming up with a keyword-rich domain name will make it easier for search engines to locate your site whenever a related search is conducted.
2. Uniqueness
Continuing on the topic above, it is not only important to have a domain that is keyword rich. It should also be original! In the spirit of name recall, you do not want your website to be confused with another more popular one. Making sure that your domain is unique and on its own is important not only for customers but also for search engines. Search engines will almost always favor a more popular website, negating all your efforts.
Misspelled or pluralized versions of domain names are also a no-no. Many popular companies applied the strategy of buying these domain names so that visitors can be directed to the original web page whenever they type the domain names incorrectly. An example of this is Flickr, a lot of people mistake the spelling of the domain to Flicker.com. Buying this domain and having visitors who mistakenly visit this website redirected to Flickr.com should be a step that the company should consider in the future.
3. Easy to Type
Further expounding on the ideas above, URLs that are easy to type are usually the ones that get recalled the most. YouTube, Facebook, MySpace or Twitter is definitely easier to type and remember than FunnyVidz2010.com. The whole point of choosing domain names is to make it easier for your customers to recall and visit your website.
Another purpose is to make sure that potential customers will be encouraged to log into your website. Having a domain name like FunnyVidz2010.com will not only defeat this purpose but it may also tag your website as spam in the eyes of search engines and potential customers.
Always remember that an online user’s attention span is very limited. Having domain names that would require a significant amount of skill to type and remember would make you lose a good portion in that short span of time which can eventually lead to loss of customer traffic and sale.
4. Easy to Remember
This is in terms of SERPs dominance marketing. One of the ways one can market a product, in this case a website, for free is through word of mouth. How can you possibly expect people to recommend your website to their friends or acquaintances when they cannot even remember how to spell or pronounce your website correctly?
Search engines are pretty much like this also. They judge websites mainly through the first impression that its domain name makes. Web developers should keep this in mind and formulate domain names that are not only easy to spell and remember but as much as possible industry related. This will make it easier for web crawlers to notice your website and pair them up with certain industry related searches in the future.
5. Short
This particular criterion has two sides. One, you do not want to have a short domain name that will attempt to compromise the over-all entity of your website unless your company can be recalled through that very short URL. Two, a long URL, as was mentioned earlier, will always be harder to recall and remember. Finding the exact mix between the two is crucial in attaining success in SEO.
Although short URLs are easier to remember and would look better on business cards and ads, you can do away with this if it compromises the relevance of your domain. Unless you are GM or Dell, find a URL that is short but will not compromise what your company is trying to establish.
6. Create Intuitive Domains
Again, first impressions are always important in web marketing. When customers log into websites such as Yahoomail.com, CareerBuilder.com, Wikipedia.org and AutoTrader.com, customers instantly have an idea of what they are going to get.
Your domain names should give your potential customers an idea of what your website is about. Yahoomail.com is for Yahoo!’s mailing service while AutoTrader.com is a website people can go to find best bargains and deals with regards to cars. This level of recognition should be present in picking out the right website domain for your company.
7. Set a Brand
Aside from being catchy, easy to recall and remember, the main point of picking out a domain name is to create a brand for your company. Big companies are successful because they have successfully created and instilled into the minds of their customers their company’s brand. If you really want to set up a brand and separate you website to others in your industry, it is highly recommended that you pick a domain name that includes the name of your business. Once you have set this up, then you can truly say you have succeeded in picking out your URL.
8. Make Sure the Domain Name is Available
Copyright infringement is a very tricky endeavor and one that should totally be avoided by any web developers. Like all other products out there, domain names are usually copyrighted and its rights are usually sold to the buyers of a particular domain. Picking a URL that already has an existing owner can be your one-way ticket to SEO failure.
To make sure you are using a domain name that is original and non-existent, you can use several web tools available like the Ajax Domain Selection Tool through their websites such as AJAZWhois.com or Domjax. These tools make it very easy for web developers to check their domain choices to see if they are truly unique and available. After checking and counter-checking the availability of your chosen domain names, you are then free to buy them and use them for your websites.
More Than Just a Domain Name
The whole point really of choosing the right domain names is to achieve name recall. This makes it easier for you to conduct business with you customers and entice potential customers to acquire your services and log into your websites.
One thing to always keep in mind is that establishing a brand and gaining online popularity takes time. You, as a web developer, should be up to the challenge of creating and making sure that your website will be recognized not only in your specific industry but more importantly throughout the whole Internet world. Always have your best foot forward!
-
just share
