From the time when when world woke up to new era of Internet, World Wide Web and .com world, people are still trying to find out what should be the factor for selecting your domain name, and what value can you derive out of your site address. You may have existing website that has been on the web for ages, so you may think you don't need to bother about your domain name, Correct? Well the fact is, no matter what you have right now, the net world is ever evolving and you can still get more out of your domain name with simple rules for naming your site.
As a matter of fact, when I started looking for a domain name for my
domain name registration and
web hosting business, I was frustrated to the core. There were so many established and reputed domain name registrars in the market, domain estate business had been known to the world and it was hard to find a suitable name for my
web hosting and
internet domain registration business. I can't recollect how many tools I used, and how many permutation and combinations were employed just to get that short and simple name that would reflect the domain name registration business I wished to conduct on the Internet. Finally I settled down for
Pubdomains.com (Derived from Public Domains - For the internet public) not because I loved it when I saw it is available, but because I was exhausted and tired with the search and time spent to find a good name!!! Isn't that what most of the folks do - grab the first one that vaguely comes anywhere close to your company name or business entity?One school of thought would say that it is bad, since it leads to proliferation of bad domain names. I disagree. The net with its unlimited domain names, domain extensions and subdomains, and ccTLD's, you can choose any domain name for your business. The success of your site does not depend upon the name itself. I am sure you would have heard the name
GoDaddy come up as worlds leading domain name registrar. Do you relate the name to the business they are in i.e.
web hosting and domain name registration? Despite having off beat name, they are successful in the field they chose. Similarly what would you associate
Moniker with? I don't see a relation between their business and name, yet they are famous!!!Of course, there are established companies like
IBM and naturally if I want to know more about
IBM, the first thing I have a tendency (and so does everyone else...) to type in
IBM.com in address bar. You would go to
Microsoft website using
microsoft.com in the same fashion, but does it put your business at disadvantage if you don't have a three letter domain name for your business? The answer is NO. You might not get direct hits to your business, but then how many times do you visit websites directly? In my experience,
most of the traffic to websites is driven by search engines. So you provide a service and you have good content, and you give something valuable to users who come to your site.
The real value of a good domain name isn't helping people find your site the first time; it's helping them find it the second time. If I visit a site through a search engine and like the content or information, either I would bookmark it or more important than using IE or Firefox bookmarks is the registration of the name in some remote corner of my mind itself. If the name is easy for me to remember, I would not go to search to go to the site I liked, I would directly type the name (and broswer history option with autofill aids me in the process...) and visit the site.We all do site hopping, clicking banners, links and jumping from one page to another. Your site would be no different and you shouldn't just count on direct hits to your site until you reach a clear position on top like
GoDaddy, however what you must consider is the fact that should someone come to your site once, they should be able to remember the name, associate it with the work you do, and finally should be able to navigate back to your site (to get something they like or want) second time without aid of other sites.
A good name that can be remembered MATTERS A LOT for the second time and repeat visitors.
You may use the same name for your site and domain name, or you may keep them separate. WAYN.com has another domain name as WhereAreYouNow.com (check their emails if you are a registred member, the emails come from whereareyounow.com!!!) but they have used WAYN to promote the site. The purpose is, as I mentioned earlier, it is easy to remember WAYN and there are less chances of typos or spelling errors. If I have to type whereareyounow.com, I may miss out one 'e' and just get lost in the cyberworld!!!
Here are some basics for selecting a good domain name.
a. Make it easy
You can choose a domain name upto 67 characters in length, but as studies prove, it is easy for human beings to remember 7 to 10 digit number and letter combinations, so the shorter the name, the easier it is for folks to remember. compare google.com with thisistheworldsbestsearchengine.com option - what is easy for you to remember?
b. Don't be crytic
The purpose of domain name is to have a easy reference point on the web, If you make it cryptic using abbreviations, or codes that make sense only to you - the public may not understand it and thus likely to forget it for complexity of the name.
c. Dont' use Dash / Hyphen in domain name.
Each day domain names are reaching the threshold value, so it would make sense to buy domain-name.com if domainname.com is not available. However, the potential flaw is that like everything else, I would first type domainname.com instead of trying domain-name.com, do-mainname.com or doma-inname.com. You see, I am again not looking for first direct hit, but even for second hit, do not assume that internet users are going to remember exact position for hypens or dashes. Avoid them if possible!!
d. Don't use numbers in domain name
so you all have read that directories sort names alphabetically and if you place a 1 before your site, your site would always come up on the top. Wrong, now the sorting is done by page rank, age of site and many other factors so unless your business has something to do with numbers, don't use them just for the sake of listing in directory.
e. Use other ccTLD's ?
Unless you are trying to register a trademark, I would seriously advice to take domain name for the country you do business in. If you get a .com and your ccTLD - that would be ideal, however if you don't get .com, and get ccTLD, go for it!!! Everyone associates a .com with global entity and .in for a local / country specific organization. Though the ccTLD's are new relative to .com, .org and .net, the fact is that search engines are increasingly giving you results from your country rather then giving you global results, and thus, your country folks are going to give you more business then what you may expect from someone across the continent just because there is a sense of belonging for them with you!!!
I am sure you would be familiar with
O be some other name!
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
- Shakespeare
So in conclusion, just to reiterate, the purpose of a domain name is to ensure that you have an address that people can remember to come back. Before you start your business or think about a website - find out a domain name that suits your needs, is simple and easy to remember. Once you are able to find a good domain name for yourself - Register Your domain name without giving a second thought (they get lost within seconds).
Once you have a good domain name registered for yourself, go ahead and develop the site to promote your business. Like everything else, it takes a while to establish, however, just a good domain name is useless if you don't have good content or service to provide. Chances are that you would get visitors only once and they would never come back if they don't like what they get - so make sure your domain name and website give to users what they want. If I am looking for shoes and come to your site because it is named somethingshoes.com dealing in junk - I would remember NOT TO revisit somethingshoes.com since the name and service do not match. A domain name by itself will not work wonders for you, unless it is promoted properly. Search Engine Optimization is the keyword these days to ensure your sites are listed in leading search engines like google and yahoo, and then a good name would linger on users mind for a while, while bad one's would be forgotten with a click to close the browser!!!
So Long,
GS
No comments:
Post a Comment