INL – News

One of the fastest ways of getting attention for your business in today’s world is to have a good online presence. And the first step to getting your business online is a good domain name.

This is one of the things that often goes overlooked – how your domain name attracts or turns away customers. Let’s look at a few tips.

1. Make Sure Your Domain Describes Your Business

Your domain name should aptly let your visitors know what your website is all about even before visiting your site. In other words, give away as much information in your domain name as possible, leaving no room for your visitors to guess what your website is selling.

For example, if your name happens to be Sue Brown and you own a hair salon called Sue’s Hair Salon, get a domain name like, www.sueshairsalon.com instead of www.suebrown.com. Seems pretty obvious, but you’d be amazed at how many business owners use their personal names as domain names instead of choosing one that specifically describes their business.

Keep it as short as possible as well. It’s easier for your customers to remember and they’re less likely to make typing errors when they enter it in their web browser.

2. Get A Domain That Includes Your Keywords

Most websites rely on Google, Yahoo and other search engines for some (or most) of their traffic. If your business’s keywords are included in your domain, you’re more likely to rank higher in the results.

Spending the time to research your keywords and find a domain that uses them, while still meeting the first criteria (descriptive, short as possible) is well worth the time.

There are plenty of other things you’ll need to do to get good rankings in the search engines, but your domain name sets the foundation for everything else. Also, avoid using dashes in your domain even if it makes it easier to find a keyword-rich name. Hyphens are believed to hurt your rankings in some search engines.

3. Can You Use A Different Extension Than .com?

Yes and no. You could use other extensions like .net, .biz or .info but it’s not the best choice. Everybody knows .com but if your site uses something else, you’re going to have to market it a lot harder to get the correct extension in people’s minds. And if someone else already has the .com version, they’ll probably get a lot of traffic from people looking for you.

How would you like your potential customers to end up on your competitor’s client list thanks to the time and money you spend on marketing?

Unless you’re intentionally targeting to brand your business as, let’s say, a nonprofit organization, in which case the .org extension is highly recommended, then sticking to the instantly recognizable .com extension is the best way to go.

So, don’t rush headlong into purchasing a domain name without first taking the time to research keyword phrases that would be a perfect match for your product or service. You can perform this much needed research at websites such as www.wordtracker.com, www.keywordtumbler.com and www.goodkeywords.com. It requires some effort, but acquiring the keyword phrases that are used by prospects and incorporating them into your domain name will pay off handsomely for years to come.