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How
To Choose A Domain Name
A domain name signifies your address on the Internet. As
no two parties may ever hold identical domain names, it is
truly a unique identifier of you or your company. It is how
your customers will remember you and find you among the millions
of other websites on the Internet. It is also part of the
formula that search engines use to match your website to
relevant keyword phrases.
A domain name that is catchy or easy to remember works well
for an online business where customers are looking for you
by a name that has been heavily marketed or is well established,
such as amazon.com or microsoft.com. Most small startup Internet
businesses don't have the budget or time to build that kind
of brand name awareness. The greatest challenge for a small
Internet business is attracting customers. Unless you have
a huge advertising budget, this usually means search engine
placement, directory listings, reciprocal links, affiliate
programs and other relatively inexpensive ways to drive traffic
to your website.
There are hundreds of search engines, but currently the largest
18 search engines receive over 90% of the searches. Each search
engine has it's own criteria for placing relevant websites
when keywords are entered into a search box. Most search engines
place a lot of emphasis on the domain name. In other words…
If somebody is searching for "blue widgets" and
you have the domain name bluewidgets.com, your likelihood
of being listed in one of the first few pages is increased
dramatically, especially if the page title and content also
contain the keywords "blue widgets".
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