Choosing a Domain Name
There are thousands of new domain names registered every day. The most common thing I hear from first time website owners is that their domain name is already taken. Nonsense, I say. With a bit of creativity and keyword research I can usually help them choose a better domain name than the one they had originally wanted. The biggest choice you have to make is whether you want a .com address or not. .NET and .ORG domains are still plentiful but new domain extensions are approved every year like .tv, .mobi, .info and .us.
One of the things I like to do first is to research the keywords or the potential search terms that you think people will use to find your website online. You can get a good idea on direction by simply doing Google searches and seeing what keyword phrases your competitors are using. Instead of thinking of a clever name and then advertising and marketing so people will find you. I think it is wiser to find out what the customer is already searching for and build a website geared to those search terms.
Many website owners are walking past the pot of gold by insisting on using their clever domain name instead of a clear and concise keyword based domain (ie: widge4u.com instead of handmadewidgets.com). We can use my fishing buddy for an example. He builds his own hand tied marabou jigs for fishing and has sold hundreds of them to his fishing buddies. When he approached me about a website, he wanted to register his name BobAndreeson.com for his fishing jig website. I later talked him into registering something like handtiedmaraboujigs.com instead.
You sacrifice a little in the length of the domain name. But, I believe the keyword phrases are far more important in getting traffic to your site. For example, if I’m searching Google for a hand-tied marabou jig, I wouldn’t search for “Bob Andreeson”.
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