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The domain name you choose for your new business can mean the life or death of your online stream of income.

Amazingly enough, the majority of the people who find your web site are not going to be those who saw a commercial and entered your web address in their browser. Rather, the majority of your web site's traffic is going to come from keyword searches done through search engines and directories like Google and Yahoo!.

Giving your online business the same name as your store, unless you have a big, thriving business that is well known by all, may not be the best answer to building your web site traffic. You may also want to give consideration to not localizing the name of your web site's domain, if you are trying to attract national or international customers. There are a couple of reasons for this. When choosing a domain name for your new business, these things should be given serious consideration.

1) The way people search for things is often by the kind of service or product, rather than by the name of a store. It is the cost and availability of a thing or a service that most interests an online shopper rather than the store or provider it comes from (unless the shopper is looking for a particular store).
2) If the domain name of you web site is localized, it will deter those who are outside the local area from visiting, just based on the name.

If your thinking about a domain name for your online business presence and your business name is very long, it should not be used. Find a way to shorten it. A lot of people don't have great typing skills. If it's too long, they may just not want to try to put all of that in the address bar. If they are from Albuquerque and your domain name is xxxxxxAtlanta they will probably not visit. If you're selling teddy bears and the name of your site is funnyfriends.com they may not remember or associate the name with the product.

Some points to remember when choosing a domain name:
o Keep it short
o Use your product or service in the name
o Only localize if you only want local customers
o Make it easy to remember
o Use key search words in the name
o Make it G rated

Learn more about this author, Laila Salaam.
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