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Top 5 Ways to Ensure Your Domain Name is Effective


Don't Make it hard on customers...

If you don't feel like you're getting enough business from your website, evaluate your domain name before you go to all of the trouble and cost of marketing it.

Maybe you've already gone to all of that trouble and spent a lot of money and can't figure out why it's just not working. If you do not have an effective domain name, you may be losing out on an unbelievable amount of web traffic. Think of your domain name as the main part of your website's signage. Keep the following concepts in mind and you won't have to rely as much on search engines for customers to get to you site.

1. Easy to Remember

The most important thing you can do for your domain name (possibly your site) is to make it easy to remember. You want customers to be able to type it in their address bar without even thinking. Look at Amazon for example. Just think of how many people looking to buy books bypass Google or Yahoo and enter "amazon.com" directly into their browser's address bar.  It is simple and easy to remember. Amazon.

2. Not Too Long

Another great thing about Amazon that also makes it easy to remember is that it is short and sweet. If you make your domain too long, people may use search engines to find what they are looking for just out of laziness because they don't feel like typing in your long URL. It may seem like that is really lazy and most people wouldn't be put off by it so much, but people want what they are looking for instantly. They find any shortcuts helpful. If they turn to the search engine and you are ranked at the top, then fine. But when they use the search engines, they are also bringing up all of your competition in front of them.  

3. Easy to spell

There's nothing more annoying as a user than trying to find a website, but not being able to come up with the right spelling. So if this happens, the user can either keep tyring different spellings (which is a pain) or again, turn to the search engines. So why not eliminate any of this hassle and just make your domain simple and easy to spell?

4. Relevant to what you do

Having a domain name that says something about what your business does, can be a good way to help people remember it. An example of this would be books.com. This domain happens to be owned by Barnes and Noble, one of the nation's largest booksellers.

This is one concept that does not apply to Amazon's domain name, but they can get away with it because they have done so well at branding their name over the years, which is the last concept I will discuss. A company like Amazon that has many different areas of business may find this harder to achieve anyway.

5. Branding

If you are going to have a domain name that isn't relevant to what your business does, you need to put a great deal of effort into branding it. Always including the domain name in ads is a good way to start.

Branding a domain name can be more difficult when you are a small business, especially now that more and more businesses have Internet presences. You need to find a way to make yours stand out from the crowd.

The bottom line is that if you want people to go straight to your site when they get online, you need to make it easy for them to do so. The easiest way for them to find you is if they know your domain by heart and don't have to think about it. Take a look at yours. If you were a user, would you be able to easily get to it?

What other ideas do you have for effective domain names?

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About the author:
Chris is a content coordinator and staff writer for SmallBusinessNewz and the iEntry Network. Subscribe to SmallBusinessNewz RSS Feeds.

Comments

A few more points...

Those are essential tips for finding a business domain name.  There are two more that I think are noteworthy. 

Avoid dashes if at all possible. 

Avoid Confusables, such as weddingtips4u.com unless you are going to register all variations of them (ie, u = you, 4 = for, four )

Source:  Business Domain Registration Tips

Good points

Thank you, those are two very good points.

Memorable Domain Names.

I have had quite good results with

my domain name

but I am always concerned that searchers might have difficulty with the spelling of albufeira. I can of course put misspellings into my keywords such as albufera, albavera,etc but nowadays the search engines are not paying too much attention to keywords thanks to spammers.I hesitate to enter such misspellings into the main text of my site.I found your tip thought provoking. Thanks.

Etched in your memory forever

A large percentage of online searches are not using "keywords" at all. They are "phrases,sentences and more importantly thoughts" Ie: How can i sell my inventory? The browser search bar is evolving into a medium to ask questions.This will be the "next generation" of search inquires. JMHO http://www.sellmyinventory.com

nice tips i like it !!!

using Keywords in the website name I think is the best you can do !!!

GOOD tips i like it !!!

THINK AT YOUR DOMAIN NAME LIKE A KEYWORD NICE ....

Is my site easy to remember ?

I have a t-shirt site, Is my site easy to remember ?

I named it T-SHIRT DESIGN JUNKIE after 12 pages of hand written mess ups...in 2005

my domains...

http://www.tdjunkie.com >> easy for my print ads, t-shirts.

http://www.tshirtdesignjunkie.com and

http://www.t-shirtdesignjunkie.com >> works gr8 with search engines and brand name listing...

im #1 for the keyword too..

RE: Is my site easy to remember?

If I saw your URL in an ad and was interested in checking out your site, I don't think any of these would be too hard to remember.

More on keywords

I have found over the years that not only do "Relevant to what you do" keywords in your domain make it much easier for your customers to remember your web site name but it also GREATLY increases your search engine ranking, thus bringing you those all important new customers. Here is 2 examples http://www.RealEstateForAsheville.com and one I have decided to sell www.CommercialRealEstateSeattle.com . In my opinion when you have a business related web site with quality keywords in the domain name (and easy to remember) the length of the name becomes much less important. For instance having www.cres.com for a Seattle commercial real estate firm might be short but tells search engines nothing and must be interpreted to your customers (it's actually a web site about online technology it seems!). Having a web site name that is blatantly telling anyone who sees it, including search engine spiders, what your company does like www.CommercialRealEstateSeattle.com is far more productive I've found. I don't think the power of search engines to a business, new or a established, should be over looked do you? Content on your site is king but a good quality .com keyword relevant domain name is the next most important thing for a web site. It even tends to generate more links for you on other peoples business related web sites I've found.

RE: more on keywords

Good advice, Doug. You're right, shorter doesn't always mean easier to remember or easily recognizable.

On the other hand, if you had gone to considerable lengths to brand your company as C.R.E.S., and in fact owned that domain name, it could still be effective. Considering you are running a regional real estate site, however, this may not be practical, whereas a large brand like Burger King can get away with bk.com. Although, I bet British Knights isn't happy about it :)

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