How to choose a good .com or .com.au domain name
Domain names are extremely important
There’s a saying in the Real Estate business – they say that the 3 most important things are location, location and location. Well, in regards to a new internet business, it’s domain name, domain name and domain name. Yes, a domain name is that important.
In the early days of the internet, domain names were fairly easy. There were so many good names still available, but as more and more businesses migrated to the internet, the best names were taken. As the time passed, finding a good domain name to register has become increasingly difficult.
Why is a domain name so important? For one thing, a domain name can help you get the traffic to your website. If you don’t get traffic, you might as well not even have a website. There’s no doubt about it, if you want to make money, you need traffic.
A domain name can help you to get traffic in a couple of ways. First of all, if your domain name is catchy and easy to remember, that will help people to find your website and to return for future visits. It’s also a good idea if your domain name gives some indication of the type of business you have. For example, if you want to have a website that helps people consolidate their student loans, it would be a good idea to have a domain name that contained some or all of those words. You might do good with “studentloans.com” or “studentloanconsolidation.com” or something similar. You can even use hyphens in the domain name, like “student-loan-consolidation.com”, etc.
The point here is that your domain name should be descriptive of your business. After all, if you were looking for a new dentist, would you be likely to visit “BigBubbaMotorcycles.com” or “GreatDentists.com”? If Big Bubba is a dentist, he’s probably not going to get many new dental patients through his website.
Let’s talk about the domain names with hyphens before we move on. Contrary to what many people think, having hyphens in your domain name does not hurt your search engine listings. Most of the search engines treat the hyphens as a space, so the hyphens make it a little easier for them to separate out the individual words.
About the only downside of using hyphens is that when people type in your URL, they may forget to put in the hyphens and go to a competitors website instead. Personally, we don’t believe this is too much of a problem, since most people find websites through search engines, so they’ll be clicking directly on a link to your website instead of typing it in by hand.
Again, it’s really important to embed keywords about your business into your domain name for good search engine ranking. Although some domains, like ebay.com or google.com do get a lot of traffic, it’s not because of any keyword in the domain name. What is an ‘ebay’ anyhow?
You’ll find that most of the high traffic websites with short, unrelated domain names get their huge amount of traffic thru paid promotional campaigns. They use radio & TV ads, high volume email advertising and other such methods that might be too expensive for a small business just getting started.
A good way to find your domain name is to develop a list of keywords that are strongly associated with your business. Write down as many keywords as you can think of, as long as they’re on your subject. Once you have your list, you can use one of the several free online tools to help select just the right domain name for your new website.
The domain name registrar at www.godaddy.com has a search feature where you can check the availability of domain names and the results will even show you other closely related domain names that are available. Another handy suggestion tool is at www.domainfellow.com Either one of these online tools will help you to find a good domain name that’s still available to register.
Here’s a good tip for you when trying to find a domain name that has your keywords in it – If you can’t find a domain name that has your keyword and is still available, you should consider using sub-domain names instead.
What’s a sub-domain name?
A sub-domain name is a prefix to a normal domain name. Let’s say that you’re in the retail computer business and you want to sell computers at your website. That’s a fairly competitive business, so you’ll probably have a hard time coming up with a good domain name that’s not already taken.
An alternative would be to choose some sort of generic term for a domain name and then use a sub-domain for your computer business. For example, let’s say that you register the domain name “lowestprice.com” That’s pretty generic, wouldn’t you agree? Now that you have that domain name registered, you can create all the sub-domains you want, limited only by your imagination and the size of your web hosting account.
Remembering that you’re in the computer business, you could now have your website at the sub-domain “computers.lowestprice.com” Using this same approach, you could go into just about any other business and have sub-domains like “insurance.lowestprice.com” and so on. See how it works?
Another good thing about sub-domains is that they don’t require registration. You only pay to register the main domain name. By using sub-domain names, you can easily embed your keywords and it won’t cost you any more money. And the search engines treat each sub-domain as a totally separate entity, so your search engine ranking for one sub-domain won’t be dependent upon you having a high ranking for your main domain name.
Secrets of Having a Good Domain Name
How do you pick a good domain name? Does it even matter what your domain name is? Will you choose a .com, .net, .org, .biz? Which one best suits you and your business?
How do other businesses choose a good domain name? Why do some domain names become so easily memorable while others just seem to not be there at all? What makes a domain name memorable?
Why Does A Good Domain Name Matter?
It is vital to your website and business to have a good domain name. Having a good domain name is just as important as your business name, logo, and possibly even more important. First you have the choice of the actual domain name, such as Yahoo, Google, or eBay, for example. Although these domain names do not seem to match the websites or businesses in any way, they work because of brand name. If you tell people to go look something up on Google they know to type in http://www.google.com or to simply type Google into their favorite search engine. People know Google is a great search engine. It has become a household name because of their choice of the domain name, and successful advertising and promotional campaigns.
Your domain name needs to match your business well. You can choose a simple name that immediately lets people know what the website will be about before they even get there, such as Wikipedia. Since it sounds like encyclopedia, people assume it is just that before they even get to the website, and it is.
You also have the choice of creating or making up your own name. It could be anything, and does not have to be a real word. However, as a general online business rule, your domain name should be the same as your business name.
Sometimes it is best to search available domain names on a web hosting website so you can see what is out there that is up for the taking. Think about whether you want your website domain name to end with a .com, .net, and the other many available endings.
Secrets Of A Catchy Domain Name
Your domain name has to be catchy. People need to be able to remember it, pronounce it and write it with ease. The shorter your domain name, the better. People will have a difficult time remembering longer domain names. Yahoo is easy to remember. It has only five letters in it. It is like yelling Yahoo!. Thatโs why people remember it so easily.
Catchy domain names are straight forward, to the point and short. Some are humorous. Some remind people of something else. Some are controversial. Some are just plain silly and make people laugh, but they remember it.
The more catchy your domain name is the more likely it is that you will have more website visitors. Think carefully about what you want for your domain name before you choose it.
Once you find your new domain name, you’ll need to register it. Fireworks can register your domain name for you, just give us a call on 1300 660 160.