What’s in a Name!
So you want to build a website. Not so fast… before you get started you’re going to need a domain name. A domain is your address on the Internet, for example barnesandnoble.com. I was going to say Amazon.com, but, with all of the commotion they’re causing online right now I might get burned at the stake. Since I like breathing I’ll stick with barnesandnoble.com
Your first choice is usually the name of your business. But what if it’s taken? For example what if your name is Bill’s Barber Shop, now that’s a pretty common name and odds are it’s going to be taken. There is always the option of taking the .net or .org if the .com version of your name is taken, but there’s a few good reasons not to.
The number one reason is that .org is suppose to be reserved for non profit organizations and .net is suppose to be for ISP’s. But even if you’re not an organization or an Internet Service Provider, I’ll give you a second reason not to register one of those extensions. Domains ending with .com are just the norm, .net and .org are just not as common and thus harder to remember. Of course, a bunch of new endings have sprung up for registering domains, but I still recommend the old standby of .com. for simplicity sake.
Even if you are not ready to put together a website you should consider reserving you name now to be sure no one else does. But you say how can someone legally take my business name? Well, if it’s not trademarked they can. So why not part with the new low price of 60.00
If you’re name is taken what should you register? The next best thing would be a descriptive domain that gives people an ides as to what you do. For example in our previous example, if your name was “Bill’s Barber Shop” you could register haircutsareus.com or wecuthair.com or hairstyles.com. If you were a barber shop “hair cut” would be one of your main keywords that would end up in your meta tags. By registering a domain name with a keyword in it supposedly this will boost your relevancy in the search engines when someone does a search for “hair cuts”. What that means is that a domain that included the word “haircut would come up before others.
A good place online to check availability of domain names is http://www.askreggie.com Do a brain storm session and see what’s available. Remember with the new longer domain names you can now register names up to 67 characters instead of the old 26. But you say “Isn’t shorter better”? Well, yes and no.
Once again, I don’t know for sure if these techniques work, but when it comes to search engine wars every little bit helps. You may also want to register more then one domain and point them all to the same URL. English you say….what does that mean? It means say you have a website that sells hubcaps and your domain name is hubcaps.com You could also register iwanthubcapsnow.com or HubCapsforNewAndUsedCars.com and your ISP can point them all to hubcaps.com. Which simply means when someone types in one of the alternate domains they’ll still wind up at hubcaps.com If you do this make sure you then submit the other domain names to the search engines.
So, what’s in a name? Anything you like, as long as it’s not taken.
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