Tips on choosing a domain name for your home business
6 tips on choosing a domain name
Choosing a domain name for a business, any business, can be as important as choosing the business name itself. In fact, it's a good idea to decide on a domain name before you register your business name to ensure you can get the name you want.
Why is a domain name important?
A domain name is the name of your company's website; like a street address, it is how people will find your business. Home based businesses in particular do a lot of work on the Internet due to low costs and the potentially vast market. For this reason you need a good domain name to help customers find you easier.
What makes a good domain name?
A good domain name is very much like a good name for a business. Can you think of some really bad business names you've seen? The worst is the numbered company - it's impossible to remember, and has no meaning attached to it. Even worse, people associate that with underhanded deals.
A long name that's hard to remember or spell will make it hard for customers to get to your website and place those orders. Think of your favorite websites - google.com, facebook.com, youtube.com. They all are short, easy to spell, and easy to remember names.
Do not stray from .com or .net
Do you ever visit a .ca or an .au website? These are country specific websites, and normally people never go to them knowingly. When you give someone a domain name of a website, they automatically assume it will end in .com or possibly .net. Anything else will not register in their memory. This is because .com are the official commercial website domain names. However, if you have a really good domain name but the .com is already taken, you can go with the .net and be reasonably assured that people will find your website without many problems. But what is that company with the .com, and are they your competitor? Hmm...
Do not even consider free web hosting
Have you seen ads on the Internet for free web hosting? That is when someone offers you a place to put your website for free instead of the $10-20 a month you might normally pay. While the savings are nice, how can they offer this? It's done through placing ads on your website. You can't control these ads, or what they are advertising - it might be exotic dancers or even your competitors! When you add to that the number of spammers that use free hosting and the long complicated domain name you will end up with for your website address, your chance of getting banned by association from some internet lists due to sharing hosting with spammers, you should never go with free web hosting.
Mine SEO statistics to your benefit
Search engine optimization (SEO) statistics enable you to look up which words are searched for the most on the internet. This is useful because you can look up the most popular words associated with your type of business, and then use a combination of them in your company name and domain name. This will result in more people searching for your website, and finding it. If you don't know where to find these numbers or lists, do a search for SEO and most popular search terms. It's ironic that you are searching for search terms, isn't it?
6 tips on choosing a good domain name for your business
Keep it short - Shorter names are easier to remember and faster to type.
Keep it easy to spell - If someone misspells your domain name they will likely end up at another webpage, get frustrated, and not bother to try again. So keep it very straight forward.
Keep it meaningful - If your company sells flowers, make sure that comes across in the domain name: pams-petals.com, or reds-roses.com. No matter your product or service, customers should have a good idea what you do just by looking at your domain name. When you see www.cvpros.net, what do you think they do? Since a CV is a resume, most people would expect them to be a resume writing service which is correct. The other possibility would be mechanics for CV joints on a car, which is www.cvpros.com.
Stick with either .com or .net - Any other type of domain name, such as a country code like .ca or .us, will not really register with people's memory when they are looking for your website.
Use a thesaurus - When you have a good idea roughly what names you want to go with for your domain or business, pull out a thesaurus and find alternate words with the same meanings. This will give you the opportunity to mix and match a larger list of words and have a better chance at getting the domain name you really want, instead of settling for your second choice.
When you find a good domain name, take it - Often when you perform domain name look-ups and don't take them right away, a company was watching over your shoulder and said "Ah ha! Someone just searched for that domain name, it must be important. I will register it, and then they will have to pay me more money when they want it!" It isn't nice, but it happens. So when you find that perfect domain name, register it. Even if you change your mind, it's normally only $10 or so out of your pocket.
Summary
A domain name is how people will find your business on the internet, so take the time to find a good name that will help your customers find you, and not drive them away. Make your domain name work for you!