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CHOOSING A GREAT DOMAIN NAME
Your domain name is an
essential part of your web presence. It's just as
important as a proper sign is for a brick and mortar based
business,
Without a domain name,
you'll find your web site is living at a jumble of numbers
known as your IP address such as 219.153.281.172
By pointing a
domain name to your hosting account, visitors can find your
site quickly and easily by just typing in your domain name.
Your domain name is the part after the www. and the includes
the .com, .net, .org or the .biz at the end.
A good domain name:
- Describes your business and what it does.
- Is easy to remember
- Is easy to spell
It's actually better
to have a longer domain name that is memorable than a short,
cryptic one that's easily forgotten. Remember that real words
are easier to remember than cryptic combinations of letters.
For example, www.RatherLongDomainName.com is better than abw3g2.com. Of
course, one that begins with the first five letters of the
alphabet or a numeral is more likely to appear top billing of
alphabetical directories.
Your choice of domain
name not only helps human visitors find your web site easily,
it also helps the search engines index your site. If you have
a domain name with the word "marketing" in it, you'll get
"points" for that keyword with the search engines. Of course, there
are a LOT of other factors that go into getting good search
engine ranking results, but a domain name with a valuable
keyword is a GREAT start towards great SERP (Search Engine
Result Page).
Try to avoid hyphens unless your domain name is very long. If you find your ideal domain
name without a hyphen, it' s a good investment to pick up the
hyphenated version as well.
If you're having trouble finding a great name, try adding a
simple letter "a" to the beginning such as "Agreatdomainname.com".
Another option is to add your location to your domain name
choice. Here's the link to a
Word Wizard
that does just that for you.
Still having trouble coming up with a great domain name? Try
doing the twist. The
Domain Twist takes two essential word elements of your
ideal domain name and combines them into dozens of
combinations.
Finally, it's essential that once you have your domain name,
that you use it for e-mail as well as for finding your web
site. Nothing looks less professional than yourname@yourisp.com.
Even if you don't have your web site up yet, you can use an
e-mail forward so mail sent to your spiffy new domain name can
be delivered directly to your isp email box. If you find the domain name of your dreams, be
sure to snatch up all the extensions you can afford. There's
nothing worse than having a competitor snatch up the .biz or
.net version of your domain name. It's a small investment for
the security it offers your business.
One final note,
with the YOUR EASY WEB hosting, you can point more than
one domain at the same web site. That means, if you find
two versions of your domain name available, be sure to pick up
both of them!
Ten years ago when Kathy started her web
development business
Virtual Impax,
she had to get creative with the spelling because a web
development company in Texas had already registered the domain
name Virtual Impacts.
A few years ago, she checked on the more common spelling and lo
and behold, it was available. (Don't know if that means
that my business was successful or if they were "smart" and
got out. <grin>)
If you check today, both domain names
point to her web development company's web site. It's
the same web site through and through, just if you spell
impacts "correctly" you'll still find her company's web site.
We can do the same for your YOUR EASY WEB too.
Really smart marketers will pick up common misspellings of
their name. If your domain name uses the word
"entrepreneur" be sure to pick up the common misspelling,
entreprenuer" as well. Both domain names can point to
the same web site, but this way a typo won't keep clients from
finding you.
Use the box below to begin your domain name search.
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