Choosing The Correct Domain Name
What do you think about choosing a domain name? Is it hard? Is it easy? What kind of domain name you want to have? There are several advices out there telling you how to choose the best domain. Mostly this kind of advice comes from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts. They normally claim that your domain name should consist one of your keywords or more. That is because it is easier for your visitors to find out what your site is about and also to improve your search engine rankings. Is this true? How to choose the best domain name for your business?
If you have a big offline business, choosing a domain name should be an easy thing to do. You just choose the name of your business. Let’s take an extreme example. Motorola Company will, should, and must choose motorola.com not BestHandPhoneEver.com.
What if you do not have an offline business and just want to start an online business? Should you choose one of your keywords inside your domain name? Should you choose something that has a related meaning to your website? Again let’s take several extreme examples. Imagine that google.com, amazon.com, yahoo.com, and ebay.com are newly registered domains. Most SEO experts will tell the webmasters to change their domain name to something related to the business itself.
Looking only at the domain names, people might think that amazon.com and yahoo.com are e-stores selling all merchandises from Amazon and vintage Indian accessories. Ebay.com is an import export company. Google.com might be an e-store selling enhanced eye-wears, thus the misspelling of goggle. I guess it is clear enough for you to understand that a domain name does not necessarily related to the business nature.
How about keyword placement inside the domain name? You should be able to answer this by yourself. Ebay.com does not have the word “auction” inside the domain. Amazon.com does not have the word “book” inside the domain. Paypal.com does not have “payment” or “processor” inside the domain.
So, should you just choose recklessly the domain name to use? Absolutely not! You should think carefully about your domain name. Below is a checklist for you to consider, sorted in the order of importance.
- Of course your domain name should not contain any misspellings.
- You, as the business owner, should be comfortable to use and mention it.
- The domain should be easy to remember by average people.
- The domain should not be too strange, except that is what you expect.
- The domain should be short enough to be easily memorized.
- Avoid using any dash “-“ if you can.
- Try to use only maximum 3 words inside the domain.
- Relate the domain with your business nature if you can.
- Put one of your keywords inside the domain if you can.
As you can see, putting keywords inside your domain or having related terms to your business nature is not very important. Along with time, you will find businesses with domain names that are not related at all to their business nature and do not have any keywords inside them but still be able to get high Google Page Ranking.
As a matter of fact, search engines do not care what your domain name is, as long as you do your marketing the right way. However, your visitors do care. If your domain name is too strange, they will never come back. If you are still confused in choosing a domain name, just copy Donald Trump’s method. When asked about his company name, he answered “Trump Organization”. So, if your last name is “smith”. You could perhaps purchase SmithOrganization.com or SmithInc.com or Smith.biz or something similar.