When Not to Use Business Names for Domains

As a business, your mindset is to promote your name and brand as much as possible. This is not always a good idea when it comes to picking a domain name for your site.

Picking a domain name may seem like a pretty basic thing. If you have a business, it seems logical that you should just use the name as the domain. In most cases, this is a mistake and you can really come to regret the decision. Why? It all has to do with search engine optimization.

If you really want to make money on the web, you need to focus on search engine optimization. “Seo” is the process of optimizing your site to get natural rankings in Google, Yahoo, MSN and other lesser search engines. Such rankings take a while to get, but you will be happy once they occur. All the clicks you get from high rankings are going to make your bottom line sparkle.

There are a lot of factors that go into search engine optimization. Finding appropriate keyword phrases is one of the most important. There are various tools you can use for this such as Wordtracker and the Yahoo Search Marketing inventory tool, previous known as the Overture inventory tool. [Yahoo purchased Overture for nearly 2 billion dollars.]

When considering a domain name, the first step is to do keyword research. You want to focus on the phrases that have the most searches each month. Once you have the list, start searching to see if any of the keyword phrases are available as a domain name. If they are, buy them! If multiple phrases are available, buy the one with the most traffic. Why? With search engine optimization, the domain matters. If your domain exactly matches a high traffic keyword phrase, you are going to have a much easier time getting high rankings than if you just use your business name.

So, should you always take this approach? No. The issue revolves around the nature of the business you are starting a site for. If the business is already well known, you want to use the business name. Let’s take an obvious example. Assume Nike wanted to start a site. They have huge brand recognition. As such, they would want to use nike.com as their domain, not insanelyexpensivetennisshoes.com.

You might be wondering how people will find your business if the name is not used in the domain? This is an easy problem to get around. Just include your business name on the home page as well as in the meta title and meta tags. The search engines will figure it out. If people search for you by the business name, they will find you.
About the Author

Halstatt Pires is with Marketing Titan – providing internet marketing services.