Did you know that choosing a domain name for your business is a prominent factor that can dictate the flow of your online success? So before you go off and buy domain names, keep in mind your domain name serves as your online identity for the long-term, and should capture the essence of your business, brand image or business products and services offered.
Realize that once you’ve started your business or have generated traffic and a profitable number of customers through a domain name, it is sometimes not in the best interests of your business to change it. Customers have come to know and trust you, and if you decide to change your domain name, you may come across as unprofessional—not to mention, you may also experience a “business nightmare” with the loss of advertising exposure you’ve earned on the search engines and traffic to that particular domain name which will occur if the domain name change was not properly supported by 301 redirects (which is the most efficient, safest and search engine friendly method for webpage redirection. It's not that hard to implement and it should preserve your search engine rankings, if you have to change file names or move pages around.)
So before you begin to buy domain names, consider these top 5 valuable tips:
Buy Domain Names Tip #1: Keep it simple. You want to find a domain name that is easy to say, easy to spell and easy to remember. If you can't find a name that fits all three criteria, keep looking. There are many reasons for this. For instance, say you’re giving your web site address to someone over the phone or on email, a complicated or long domain name has a higher chance for misinterpretation or spelling errors. However, this being said, sometimes a longer domain may be more beneficial if it can include keywords, and still be easy to remember (See Tip #2)
Buy Domain Names Tip #2: Try to come up with a unique or keyword-relevant domain name that reflects your business, products, or services. If your web site is going to play a crucial role in your business, then it’s important to have an adequately researched keyword incorporated within the domain name. This will also help to support higher rankings for all your pages in the search engines results for the specific search term or keyword you are trying to target. E.g. If your company is “ABC Domain Names Inc.”, you would want to avoid an abbreviated domain such as “abc.com” or abc-dn.com”. Instead, your web site would benefit much more with a domain such as “abcdomainnames.com” or “abc-domainnames.com” and even “abc-domainname.com”.
Use keyword research tools available online to determine which targeted terms garner the most traffic and would be most beneficial to include in your domain. By including highly searched targeted keywords, you’ll benefit with higher rankings on the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN, as well as generate additional traffic from users that search for relevant sites by typing in directly into the URL bar hoping to find what they’re looking for, e.g. www.buydomainnames.com
Buy Domain Names Tip #3: Buy all plural and hyphenated versions of your domain and forward them to your website’s primary domain name. This strategy will lessen the possibility of losing potential customers who might misspell your primary domain. Furthermore, you’ll protect your name from competitors who will intentionally buy domain names similar to yours to forward to their website, and take the traffic that was meant for you!
Try not to use numbers unless you can purchase both the numerical and alphabetical names. If you can buy domain names with both listings available, then go for it!
Register similar domain names: If you believe that in the future you’re going to have a huge amount of people visiting your web site through word-of-mouth advertising, then you should consider registering similar domain names that direct to your main URL (i.e. www.abcdomains.com and www.abcdomainnames.com). There are cyber-squatters who buy domain names with hopes that they can sell them for a profit to someone who really needs them. Do it right the first time and you won’t have to deal with this kind of issue!
Buy Domain Names Tip #4: If you intend to have a web site for commercial or business reasons, once you find a name that works, choose to register it with the .com extension. The .com extension has better mass appeal simply because it is what most people will automatically enter when going by memory. So if the .com version of your preferred domain is unavailable, choose another domain name.
Once you own the .com name, you could also buy the other popular extensions such as .ca, .net, .org and .biz. This way, you won’t leave much room for competitors to leech visitors and customers from you by using your domain name, through other popular extensions.
Tip #5: If your current business name has already earned brand recognition, then by all means attain the company name when you buy domain names. For instance, people normally use the term Xerox when referring to photocopy, so if you are Xerox, then you should register Xerox as a domain name to leverage on the popularity of that brand name.
This is usually not the case, so using a keyword-rich domain name is a better move for most people. To further responsibly manage your business online, you should also try to buy a set of two domain names—one that includes your business or brand name, and another that includes related keywords or key phrases. Just be sure to have one as your primary to be submitted to search engines, and that the others are set up as forwards only, and not submitted to the search engines to avoid confusion. Think Profits.com Inc., a leading Vancouver Internet marketing firm advises to buy domain names from a credible domain provider. Do your due diligence as you would for any other important business decision, and be certain that whichever domain name provider you choose to buy domain names from is a trusted source and will not resell or give your email address to spammers.
“Don’t choose a domain name provider simply based on the lowest cost. Like anything, you get what you pay for. Take a moment to think about what you’re really buying into with lower cost domains... are they providing spam-free domain names? Most likely, not. Will the provider offer you dedicated customer service and support when you really need it? Are they accessible by phone to speak in person for assistance? These are just a few simple questions to help you qualify the best domain name provider for your service needs. We know you’ll agree the hundreds of hours you’ll save in time deleting annoying spam is well worth the extra investment of a few extra dollars when you buy a domain.
Copyright © 2007 Think Profits.com Inc. All rights reserved.
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