Domain Name Selection
So you finally made the leap and decided you want to give internet marketing a try…now what?
The first thing you need to do is decide what niche you are going to promote followed by what keywords you are going to target. Now once you have decided upon these things the next step is to settle on a URL or domain name. Many people don’t put a lot of thought into the domain name selection process, relying solely on their skill at internet marketing or the power of their product or service. However, I think that this step would best benefit from a little forethought and planning. Why you ask? Well there are quite a few things you need to consider when choosing your domain. For instance, should your domain:
- Be Keyword or Brandable
- Be Hyphenated or Not
- Be Long or Short
- Use .Com, .Org, .Net, .Biz, etc.
- Use Plurals, "The", "My" & "Blog"
- Use Stop Words
Or should you use
- Multiple Similar Domains
Keyword or Brandable
There have been countless debates and discussions regarding whether or not you should choose a keyword domain or one that would be more memorable or brandable in the eyes of your readership. While both of these goals MAY be achieved with one URL many people will be left to chose one or the other.
Keyword domains utilize keywords that your site or blog is going to be about within the actual domain itself. For instance, if you are a Las Vegas widget manufacturer some good keyword domain examples may be LasVegasWidgets.com, LasVegasWidgetManufacturer.com or WidgetManufacturer.com. There are a couple of excellent reasons for having a keyword domain. First of all it readily communicates to the reader / surfer what they should expect to see when they get to your site. Secondly, the search engines take a good look at your domain name when they are choosing where to best index your site. Obviously if you are planning on mainly targeting search engine traffic this may be the way you want to go.
There have been countless debates and discussions regarding whether or not you should choose a keyword domain or one that would be more memorable or brandable in the eyes of your readership. While both of these goals MAY be achieved with one URL many people will be left to chose one or the other.
Keyword domains utilize keywords that your site or blog is going to be about within the actual domain itself. For instance, if you are a Las Vegas widget manufacturer some good keyword domain examples may be LasVegasWidgets.com, LasVegasWidgetManufacturer.com or WidgetManufacturer.com. There are a couple of excellent reasons for having a keyword domain. First of all it readily communicates to the reader / surfer what they should expect to see when they get to your site. Secondly, the search engines take a good look at your domain name when they are choosing where to best index your site. Obviously if you are planning on mainly targeting search engine traffic this may be the way you want to go.
Brandable domains are more about establishing your identity to your following. For instance, when asked about online auctions most people immediately think eBay even though there is nothing in the name that suggests it is an online auction site. When talking about tissue paper most people refer to it as Kleenex even though Kleenex is just 1 BRAND of tissue paper (as is Soft ‘N White, Tisyu, & Blest). Good examples of brandable URLs include eBay.com, Digg.com, MySpace.com and FaceBook.com to name just a few. These types of sites or blogs would be ideally suited to creating and developing a community of loyal readers. Obviously these sites can also do well in the search engines depending on how they are laid out and the content that is developed for them; URLS are only one of the tools that the search engines use to determine a sites relevancy.
Hyphenated or Not
One common question that comes up often is with regards to whether or not one should utilize a hyphen(s) in their domain name…this most commonly occurs when you settle on a domain idea only to find that the domain in question is already taken. Of course as with anything there are a number of pros and cons to either decision.
One common question that comes up often is with regards to whether or not one should utilize a hyphen(s) in their domain name…this most commonly occurs when you settle on a domain idea only to find that the domain in question is already taken. Of course as with anything there are a number of pros and cons to either decision.
- Pro - The search engines are more readily able to identify the keywords you are trying to promote as they are broken up by hyphens.
- Pro - Being that the non-hyphenated version is taken at least you still get a version of the domain you initially settled on.
- Con - People WILL forget the hyphens (not ALL people obviously but some will). Imagine this…you know the website is HomeBasedBusinessOpportunity.com but can’t remember if it is Homebased-Business-Opportunity.com or Home-Based-Business-Opportunity.com. Anytime you use a hyphen in your URL there is a significant risk that you are handing prospects over to your competition for this reason alone.
- Con - In some circles this could be considered spammy.
Long or Short
Another topic that is hotly debated is how long a domain name should be; currently domain names can be as long as 67 characters in length. In general most people agree (or would argue) that the shorter the domain name is, the better. One of the main reasons for this is that the longer the domain the more room for error when a prospective surfer is trying to type it in.
Shorter domains tend to appear more appealing to the eye in advertising (both online and offline). That being said, a short domain name is typically better than a long domain name as long as the domains name makes sense to the surfer and is memorable. Put yourself in a surfer’s shoes when making this determination. Would you more readily remember hbbo.com or homebasedbusinessopportunity.com?
Of course shorter domains are also becoming increasingly difficult to acquire as many of the good ones have already been snapped up. Plus longer keywords might possibly fare better on certain search engine because of the weight they place on the keywords appearance in a domains name.
.Com, .Org, .Net, .Biz, etc.
Something else you will have to consider when selecting the perfect domain is which TLD (Top Level Domain) you should go with. Should you stick with .com and nothing else? Will a .net, .org or .biz TLD suffice? Should you pick a country specific TLD such as .us, .de, .au, .ca, etc.? Unless your business opportunity is based in a single country or region, it is pretty safe to exclude the use of any country specific TLDs. That being the case we can move on and talk about the .coms, .nets, .bizs etc.
Many people are of the opinion that .com is the ONLY way to go (I tend to fall into this category). The theory behind this is that if you type a business name into certain address bars without the TLD at the end (i.e. you just type in WidgetManufacterer NOT WidgetManufacturer.com) it will automatically look for a .com first and if there is one send the surfer directly to that site without even checking to see if there is a WidgetManufacturer.net, WidgetManufacturer.biz or WidgetManufacturer.org.
Of course the opposite school of thought is that the domain itself is king. These marketers would rather have WidgetManufacturer.net if " Widget Manufacturer " was the primary keyword they wanted to be found for rather than compromise their keywords for a different .com. The risk of course is that many people are conditioned to go to the .com first. You could also leave your prospect with the impression that you got into the game late (as evidenced by the fact that the .com was already taken) and therefore you may be less educated about your topic.
My recommendation is that you make sure that if you chose to go with something other than a .com you make sure to include your TLD in any advertising you do. For instance if you are handing out business cards for the above URL you need to make sure that you use WidgetManufacturer.net not just WidgetManufacturer.
Plurals, "The", "My" & "Blog"
Most of the time if the domain name you are trying to register is unavailable the registrar will suggest other variations of your primary choice. For instance if you chose WidgetManufacturer.com but find that it is taken, your registrar might suggest URLs such as:
Something else you will have to consider when selecting the perfect domain is which TLD (Top Level Domain) you should go with. Should you stick with .com and nothing else? Will a .net, .org or .biz TLD suffice? Should you pick a country specific TLD such as .us, .de, .au, .ca, etc.? Unless your business opportunity is based in a single country or region, it is pretty safe to exclude the use of any country specific TLDs. That being the case we can move on and talk about the .coms, .nets, .bizs etc.
Many people are of the opinion that .com is the ONLY way to go (I tend to fall into this category). The theory behind this is that if you type a business name into certain address bars without the TLD at the end (i.e. you just type in WidgetManufacterer NOT WidgetManufacturer.com) it will automatically look for a .com first and if there is one send the surfer directly to that site without even checking to see if there is a WidgetManufacturer.net, WidgetManufacturer.biz or WidgetManufacturer.org.
Of course the opposite school of thought is that the domain itself is king. These marketers would rather have WidgetManufacturer.net if " Widget Manufacturer " was the primary keyword they wanted to be found for rather than compromise their keywords for a different .com. The risk of course is that many people are conditioned to go to the .com first. You could also leave your prospect with the impression that you got into the game late (as evidenced by the fact that the .com was already taken) and therefore you may be less educated about your topic.
My recommendation is that you make sure that if you chose to go with something other than a .com you make sure to include your TLD in any advertising you do. For instance if you are handing out business cards for the above URL you need to make sure that you use WidgetManufacturer.net not just WidgetManufacturer.
Plurals, "The", "My" & "Blog"
Most of the time if the domain name you are trying to register is unavailable the registrar will suggest other variations of your primary choice. For instance if you chose WidgetManufacturer.com but find that it is taken, your registrar might suggest URLs such as:
- MyWidgetManufacturer.com
- TheWidgetManufacturer.com
- WidgetManufacturerGuru.com
Now you must decide if it is in your best interest to take one of them or move on to another choice.
If you do decide to take one of them (as with marketing domains with TLDs other than .com) you must always make sure that the additions are always utilized in your advertising. For instance if you chose to go with MyWidgetManufacturer.com you need to make sure that your business cards say MyWidgetManufacturer.com and not WidgetManufacturer.com. Of course choosing to go with one of these variations also increases the chance that a prospective client will find your competitors site on accident due to forgetting to type the "my" or "the" in the URL.
As far as plurals go most experts would recommend you not use one unless you could get the singular version as well. Too many websites have lost business or worse, found themselves in legal battles over copyright and trademark issues because they took the plural version of an existing URL.
Including the word "blog" in a URL (i.e. WidgetManufacturerBlog.com) may seem like a good way to get a domain that may otherwise be taken. There is actually nothing wrong with the philosophy as long as you are 100% sure that the site in question will NEVER be anything but a blog. The problem comes if you decide you are tired of running a blog and want to turn it into a social site dedicated to your niche; there is a good chance that the domain will not match the goal.
Use of Stop Words
Stop words are common words that many of the search engines (like Google) ignore during search queries because they are so common. Examples of these types of words include "and", "a", "are", "I", "how" and "when" to name a few. Now you may be asking yourself "Ok, how exactly is that going to help me?" I am going to demonstrate that by giving you an example.
Let’s say you want to target "network marketing" as the main keyword for your site and would like to try to fit it into your domain but find that NetworkMarketimg.com is already taken. You may want to consider utilizing a stop word in your domain. For instance, if you do a search for "network marketing" (without the quotes) you will see that Google returns approximately 107 million results; at least as of May of 2009. Now if you do a search for "a network marketing" (again without the quotes) you will see that Google returns 103 million results. If ANetworkMarketing.com were available, you could pick it up from any registrar and the search engines should view it in the same light in terms of keyword density as NetworkMarketing.com.
Multiple Similar Domains
One final thing to consider when trying cornering your market would be the choice to secure multiple related domains. For instance if you are going after WidgetManufacturer.com and your registrar says that the .biz, .org, and .net versions are also available you may want to at least consider picking them all up in order to protect your niche from someone who might want to leech from all your hard work.
The most important thing in all of this is to always remember why you chose to get into this business, always keep your goals in front of you, always have fun, and most importantly remember success lives on the other side of fear!
If you do decide to take one of them (as with marketing domains with TLDs other than .com) you must always make sure that the additions are always utilized in your advertising. For instance if you chose to go with MyWidgetManufacturer.com you need to make sure that your business cards say MyWidgetManufacturer.com and not WidgetManufacturer.com. Of course choosing to go with one of these variations also increases the chance that a prospective client will find your competitors site on accident due to forgetting to type the "my" or "the" in the URL.
As far as plurals go most experts would recommend you not use one unless you could get the singular version as well. Too many websites have lost business or worse, found themselves in legal battles over copyright and trademark issues because they took the plural version of an existing URL.
Including the word "blog" in a URL (i.e. WidgetManufacturerBlog.com) may seem like a good way to get a domain that may otherwise be taken. There is actually nothing wrong with the philosophy as long as you are 100% sure that the site in question will NEVER be anything but a blog. The problem comes if you decide you are tired of running a blog and want to turn it into a social site dedicated to your niche; there is a good chance that the domain will not match the goal.
Use of Stop Words
Stop words are common words that many of the search engines (like Google) ignore during search queries because they are so common. Examples of these types of words include "and", "a", "are", "I", "how" and "when" to name a few. Now you may be asking yourself "Ok, how exactly is that going to help me?" I am going to demonstrate that by giving you an example.
Let’s say you want to target "network marketing" as the main keyword for your site and would like to try to fit it into your domain but find that NetworkMarketimg.com is already taken. You may want to consider utilizing a stop word in your domain. For instance, if you do a search for "network marketing" (without the quotes) you will see that Google returns approximately 107 million results; at least as of May of 2009. Now if you do a search for "a network marketing" (again without the quotes) you will see that Google returns 103 million results. If ANetworkMarketing.com were available, you could pick it up from any registrar and the search engines should view it in the same light in terms of keyword density as NetworkMarketing.com.
Multiple Similar Domains
One final thing to consider when trying cornering your market would be the choice to secure multiple related domains. For instance if you are going after WidgetManufacturer.com and your registrar says that the .biz, .org, and .net versions are also available you may want to at least consider picking them all up in order to protect your niche from someone who might want to leech from all your hard work.
The most important thing in all of this is to always remember why you chose to get into this business, always keep your goals in front of you, always have fun, and most importantly remember success lives on the other side of fear!
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