Being a “newbie” in almost anything can often lead to costly mistakes in our lives. Besides money, we may work day and night for weeks, months or even years on a project that eventually doesn’t amount to anything at all. Sure, maybe we just misread the size of the market for our chocolate-covered slippers, but more often it is because of the business decisions we made along the path. Admit it, sometimes we just make our “best guess” and “hope” it works out. And then we are faced with another “best guess” and before long, you may have a dozen or more “best guesses” as a foundation for you business. And that is all because we just didn’t know how to make the right decisions at the right time. Personally, I refuse to admit how many times I’ve been through that process because it is embarrassing, but let’s just say it has been enough times to “finally” learn stop making the same mistakes. The good thing is, we can learn from our own mistakes and along the way, we can try to help others who may still be in that “lost and confused” state… you know, not knowing enough to be able to ask the right questions about what you don’t know! Well, I made many of mine of a period of several years as I was just getting to know this mysterious and magic world wide web of ours. And now, what I’ve learned, I can pass along.
The overall success of a website depends on a complex variety of elements including the message you are trying to convey, the look of and feel of the site, and, of course, the content. But a primary element that many people just “grab” and then move on is one that will have a huge impact, either positive or negative. And that is the domain name you choose. Without a correctly-chosen domain name to represent you or your business, it may not matter how much money you invest or how good your products are, nobody will know if they don’t know your website exists. That means no traffic, and no traffic means no ability to sell anything, even if it is just you ideas. That’s why someone who wants to get noticed on the web, or perhaps even start a business – the right way – should read this article.
First you need to buy a domain. When I say “buy” a domain name, I’m actually meaning temporary ownership, or more precisely, leasing it, because once you stop paying the annual fee, you’ll lose ownership of that name. So, when buying a domain, the first thing you need to ask yourself is what you will be doing with the domain, or your “web site.” Will it be just to share your personal information and photos with family and friends? It can be, and that was my original intent when I purchased my personal website’s domain name. I bought it because I was thinking it would be the easiest way to share pictures of me, my family and my pets instead of making email attachments and then sending the email to everyone I wanted to see those pictures. What a hassle! So, if that is the main reason for you to have a website, then it really doesn’t make any difference if the domain name consists of only your own name or any other combination of letters that is personal to you, since you will not be depending on search engines to be found, but only on your own efforts to get your domain name out to those who you want to visit your domain. You can easily do this by inserting your web site’s “link” (another way to say “domain name”) into your emails and them email that to whomever you want to visit your web site.
But, if your plan is to reach a much larger population than just your friends, you need to be more thoughtful on what that domain name should be. The name you choose needs to be something that will make sense to people who have never heard of you, from one end of the world to the other. For instance, if you are trying to promote your business online, potential customers are most likely going to find you by using search engines (like Google) and ask for what they are looking for. Search engines don’t do well in finding services with only people’s names in them. One option is to buy a domain name that consists on the name of your business, like smithservicesinc.com, rodriguezassociates.org, etc. However, your business name by itself is really not a very good idea if that name doesn’t truly describe what your business does, like the previous examples did not. That may work if your business name was as popular as Amazon.com, eBay or Yahoo, but if that were the case, you probably wouldn’t be reading this article. Those businesses don’t need much help from search engines, but the likelihood is that your business will need help. So, if you want your website to have a good chance of being found by many people so you can generate lots of sales, a good start would be buying the right domain name.
Since the soul of an online business is traffic, and by traffic I mean lots of hits or views, you should buy a domain name that will let search engines know what your business is all about. It would be good to mention the products or services you are offering so when someone does a search using certain “keywords” that are related to your business, there is a good chance your link will be found. The more relevant the keywords you use are to the search, the higher your link will be displayed on the results page. However, don’t make a classic mistake of buying a domain name that sounds similar to another word or phrase, but with slightly different spelling. For instance, replacing syllables with numbers is usually not a good idea, as in these examples: happy2gether (meaning happytogether), earna4tune (meaning earnafortune), ezlearning (meaning easylearning), etc. The reality is, how likely would it be that people will type numbers in instead of syllables on a search just because they sound similar? Probably not very much. The above examples will more likely drive people to the site (probably a competitor) that doesn’t have to use numbers.
Another thing to try to do is to keep your domain names short. One-word domain names are very valuable but almost impossible to find nowadays. I am fairly certain that it would be difficult to find any word in the dictionary that is not already owned by someone, somewhere in the world. And if that particular name was in any way related to the financial industry, you would probably have to pay millions of dollars to buy the name from the person or company that already owned it. Two-words domain names are not easy to find either, unless they are a combination of words that don’t mean much or do not contain popular keywords. Let’s take the domain name youyellow.com. It’s a combination of the words you and yellow. What can I obtain with that? To me, not much. Maybe someone looking for yellow people or scared people, but I can’t think of much else. But a domain name that contains a combination of two keywords like “mortgage” + “rates”, or “airline” + “tickets”, or “affordable” + “dentures”, well, that’s something altogether different. If a good combination of two keywords that relate to your business is still available, go ahead and buy it before it’s too late! If you have tried all possible two-keyword combinations that you need in your domain name and they have all been taken, then try adding a third keyword, and so on. The ideal domain name should be short, easy to remember, have no misspellings and contain keywords that will describe the content of the website. Oh yes, please, stay away from hyphenated domain names. The domain name buyforless.com is much better than buy-for-less.com. Try typing both names yourself into Google and see what comes up. Plus, isn’t typing a hyphenated domain name much more difficult than one without hyphens? Names that are harder to type will reduce the potential for favorable results and a profitable business online.
After the value of the name itself, what comes AFTER the period is also important. Dot “com” extensions are more popular than all the dot nets, dot orgs, dot infos and dot “anything else” combined! First of all, when someone who doesn’t know much about the world wide web says “Go to the website financialservices,” but doesn’t specify what extension he’s talking about, the first thing that comes to everyone’s mind is likely to be “dot com.” Isn’t that what you would think? Actually, that IS what everyone thinks, even with all the publicity about other extensions. Dot com is still the most important and dominant name extension out there, and you should try to go with the flow rather than find a name that is easy to get with dot biz or dot us or some other extension. It’s just the way our human minds work, we have all been indoctrinated to think of dot come first. Just like for humans, a name can be something that makes other people smirk (i.e. A boy named Sue) or it can be the key to popularity and success. The difference is, for humans, a name has to be pleasant to our ears and have a good meaning or reputation. For an online business, the name has to be “pleasant” and have a good reputation with search engine robots, which are looking for relevance, no matter if the domain name itself doesn’t necessarily sound unattractive to us. Of course, the best of all worlds is to come up with a name that does both.
When you are ready to buy a domain name, it is a good idea to do some research on keyword popularity. That means; which are the most popular searches online? To help you out, go to:
http://www.selfseo.com/keyword_suggestion_tool.php
or
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Type in a word to see how popular it is. You don’t want to buy a domain name with a keyword that nobody cares about so make sure you come up with one that contains at least some of the popular keywords for your industry. This will increase the possibilities of your website being found during ordinary searches by ordinary people. And that is what you really want, right?
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