What’s In a Domain Name?
======================== There are a number of really good reasons as to WHY you should own your own domain name:
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If you ever change your web host, your domain name goes with you. Your regular visitors or customers who knew your site name as www.fishinglureearrings.com (for example) would not have to be informed about a change of URL to www.fishinglurejewelry.com. They would simply type your domain name and be redirected to your new site location on the web This is important because the last thing you want to do is redo all of your search engine optimization all over again if you ever have to move your site! Also don’t think that having to move your site won’t one day happen to you. Quite often owners of a new website don’t ever plan on it becoming successful and having to forgo small bandwidth for a larger option.
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If you are a business, a domain name gives you credibility. It is part of your identity and your branding Few people would be willing to do business with a company with a dubious URL like http://www.reallycheaphosting.com/feathers-earringlure/108985/htm. It is simply too long and complicated. A page URL like this is also too long for the search engine submission services that might truncate the end of it to make it fit. This will lead visitors to your site to reallycheaphosting.com (a fictional company) or a 404 page of some kind.
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If you get a domain name that describes your company's business or name, people can remember the name easily and can return to your site without having to look it up or search all over the Internet. In fact, if you get a good name that describe your product or service, you might even get people who were trying their luck by typing your product" in their browser. A good example would be a site called “vacuums.com” Of course that name is probably taken which is where cleverness either to do with rhyme or being really specific about your niche might come in handy.
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If you want to attract sponsor, link partners or advertisers for your web site, owning your own domain name gives your web site credibility and respectability. The fact that you have paid for your domain name lets them (and the search engines) know that you are serious. The reason you need all of this credibility is because the search engines are more likely to place sites that have a lot of links in them higher on their search engine pages then ones that are only indexed with just a couple of sites.
If it’s possible it’s a great idea to make your domain name identical to your web site name. If you have ever tried to do this, you probably know by now that just about every phrase and product name in the world is already registered as a domain name. Still, at the very try to register a domain that at least closely mimics the web site you are creating.
For instance, lets just say you want to open an online gem jewelry store and call it gemjewelry.com. Alas, you will see that domain is taken and some one else on a site called whosit.com is offering it for sale for one thousand dollars. Whosit.com is a search engine that allows you to find out who owns what domain name and how much they want to charge you to own it. However you do see that the gemjewelry.net is available to buy for $10 so you purchase that and newagebooks.net becomes the name of your site.
Naming a site after its domain name is important because it is part of what marketers call branding. If your web site name is also part of your URL, your customers will automatically know where to go and what to type into a search engine to find you.
Still it might be better to have a .com name that is available such as symbolicgems.com then gemjewelry.net.
This is because if a customer types an important key word phrase such as “gem jewelry” into a Google search box chances are that they will end up at the web site that has the .com on its tail. Also research shows that people tend to remember a .com name more then they would ever remember a .net name (or any of the other popular URL suffixes such as .net, .info or .biz.)
In the competitive world of the Internet, where people automatically turn to the Web for information, it pays to have a domain name that reflects your site or business. However you might have to be prepared to pay for exactly the right domain name so that your business is easy for your customers to find. Recall that the number of times your link is clicked on because your URL name is a good match for your product, the faster and higher your domain name will rise in the search engine page rankings.
Of course if you are starting your business on a shoestring you might find yourself doing this entire web site name process backwards. It can be cheaper to obtain a domain first and then name your web site or business after the domain name that you managed to acquire. For instance, if all the good .com names were already taken for a site you wanted to name healthyshoes.com and all that you could get is healthyshoes.net then you might want to consider naming your entire business HealthyShoes.Net.
The reason people do this is exactly because they couldn’t get that perfect domain name. However there is no business name that is more perfectly optimized then one that is named exactly as the URL displays itself on the screen, as would be the case with HealthyShoes.Net. This is much better then naming it something more vague such as PhysicallyCorrectShoes.Com. However sometimes a memorable name that does not have it’s .com taken is less then one creative degree away from the name that you originally wanted for your site.
For instance in the case of the unavailable healthyshoes.net, a quick search with keyword inventory tools might reveal that people don’t type in the term “healthy shoes” at all when they search for this type of product. In fact it seems that they are more likely to search for healthy shoes for feet or health shoes in which case both terms make very decent .com names – healthyshoesforfeet.com and healthshoes.com. In theory healthshoes.com would have a slight edge over the keyword healthyshoesforfeet.com as it is shorter and more easily picked up by the search engines. It is also quite easy to name a business Healthy Shoes For Feet or Health Shoes without compromising what your business is about.
Domain names can be of any length up to 67 characters. You don't have to settle for an obscure acronym for a domain name like psychicchat.info when what you mean is spiritualrsingleschatroom.com.
The jury is still out on whether a long or short domain name is better. Some marketing experts argue that shorter domain names are easier to remember, easier to type and have less spelling errors: for example, "bewitched.com" is easier to remember and less prone to typos than "samanthastevens.com" (which can also be spelled stephens)
Whether long or short it is of course always a good idea to relate the domain name to a keyword that is relevant to the service you provide. This means doing a bit of keyword research on the kind of lingo or slang that your potential customers might use. For instance if you are planning to do a website about Yorkshire Terriers you might do better with yorkies.com (yorkies being a common search term) rather than yorkshireterriers.com (as it is longer and terriers is a commonly misspelled word.)
Some experts say that a longer domain name is usually easier on the human memory - for example, "grn.com" is a sequence of unrelated letters that is difficult to remember and type correctly, whereas if we expand it to its long form "getrichnow. com", clients are more likely to remember the domain name.
However if you get an acronym that makes sense by creating another phrase or word you have probably hit SEO gold. A good example of a clever acronym is www.madd.com (Mothers Against Drunk Driving).
As a rule of thumb – if it is a shorter name make sure it is to the point and meaningful. If it is longer than two words then make sure it is a memorable phrase and preferably a combination of keywords created from terms that people look for when they search for your type of service or product online.
Subtly Altering A Domain Name
Very often, if you can't get the domain name you want, the domain name registrar will suggest alternate for you to choose from. For example, if you wanted toytrain.com, and it was taken (and of course it is), the domain registrar will suggest other options such as:
thetoytrain.com
mytoytrain.com
toytrain.com
If do decide you take the "the..." and "my..." forms of the domain name, you must always remember to promote your site with the full form of the name as this is another good way for you to accidentally drive traffic to the lucky owner of plain old toytrain.com.
Paying Attention To Suffixes
If you are a niche marketer having a suffix that is not a .com may not hurt your business. If you can't get the ".com" domain of their choice, but find the ".net", ".org" or other country-specific top level domains (TLDs) available (like .de,, .ca, .nu, .uk) it might be a good idea to go for it if your business is specialized.
For instance if you are a local historian who is based in Toronto Canada and specializes in the history of the city, it is not a bad idea to use the domain associated with that city if it is available. Example: Torontohistory.ca.
This, believe it or not, is a better choice then Torontohistory.com which is less specialized and specific.
Your URL suffix can also accent a not for profit or informational organization. For some the .org suffix describes a non-profit venture and the .info suffix describes a site that is more like a library or instructional. Of course the shortage of available and affordable .com suffixes means that many businesses are also using these suffixes. For instance a site named petdogs.info is not necessarily a free informational resource.
Others would say to not compromise when it comes to the ". com" issue. As grounds for their arguments, they cite that some browsers, such as Overture, work alphabetically.
Apparently, the browser searches for a domain name "aaaapplepicking.com" before attempting "aaaapplepicking.net".
As such, people who do that will be delivered to your competitor's site if you do not also own the ".com" extension which of course comes alphabetically before the .net extension.
