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What's In A Website Name !

ImageNaming a site after its domain name is important, for the simple reason that when people think of your website, they'll think of it by name.

Imagine if your business (or website) is called "Engage", but somebody else holds that domain name. Instead, you have some obscure domain name called, say, "connectbusiness.com". What happens when your customers, recalling that Engage has a product/service they want, type "www.engage.com"? They'll wind up at your competitor's website or one that is irrelevant. One lost sale. Branding is really important in marketing your business and to build a brand recognition and to gain your competitive edge to stand out from your customes, your domain name, business name and website name should be the same. This builds familiarity for viewers and they will remember you first.

What if you cannot get the domain name of your choice? It really depends on how committed you are to that particular name - which you will if it is the same name of your business offline.
If you have an existing brand name that you're known for, you won't want to change that name just because you couldn't get the domain name. It might have taken you a lot of time and money to establish that name. If so, you might simply want to try to buy the domain name from the current owner. Making sure the domain name that matches your brand name is very important.

The very name that you use to advertise your product/service is the name that you will want for your domain, because that is the first thing that people will try in their browser. It is also the easiest thing for them to remember, and whatever that is easily remembered, will be more likely to be tried out than the obscure domain name.

Long domain names that have your site keywords in them also have an advantage in that they fare better in a number of search engines. Which would I go for? The shorter name if I can get a meaningful one, or a longer name with site keywords. I would probably avoid extremely long names verging on 67 characters. Aside from the obvious problem that people might not be able to remember such a long name, it would also be a chore typing it and trying to fit it as a title on your web page.

Should you get a hyphenated name? There are a few things to consider here:

  1. Disadvantage: It's easy to forget the hyphens when typing a name. Many users are used to typing things like compostbindelivery.com but not compost-bin-delivery.com They'll probably leave out the hyphens and wind up at your competitor's site.
  2. Disadvantage: When people recommend your site to their friends verbally, having hyphens in your domain name leads to more potential errors than when the name does not contain hyphens. For example, how do you think your visitors will refer to your site if it is named "healthy--books-and-videos.com"? They might say, "I visited Healthy Book and Videos dot com yesterday. It was fabulous." Their friends, remembering that comment later, might type into their browsers "healthybooksandvideos.com".
  3. Advantage: Search engines can distinguish your keywords better and thus return your site more prominently in search results for those keywords occurring in your domain name. Search engines understand hyphens as separate words instead of them all bunched together.
  4. Advantage: The non-hyphenated form may no longer be available. At least this way, you still get the domain name you want.

Try to avoid hyphenated names if you can, but I guess it really depends on your domain name and your situation.

What if you can't get the ".com.au" domain of your choice, but find the ".net.au", ".org" or other country-specific top level domains available (like .de, .nu, .sg, etc). Should you try for these?

The answer is not as straightforward as you might think. If your website or business caters to the local community, such as a pizza delivery business or recruitment agency etc, then it makes sense to get a country-specific domain. You actually benefit from having such a local domain because the people in your country know that they're dealing with a local entity, which is what they want.

What if yours is a site or business that can benefit from an international audience? After all, if they stay in (say) the United Kingdom, they're not likely to want to try to order pizza from pizzaparlour.com, which suggests a US or an international site. You'll have better luck calling it pizzaparlour.co.uk, ie, with a UK domain.

You will however find that a lot of Australian sites have .com and .com.au but use .com as the main domain. If you have both when you type in the address it goes to the main one.

Some sites settle for the ".com" extension and no less. As grounds for their arguments, they cite the browser algorithms used to locate a website when a user simply types a name like "businessmentor" into the browser. Apparently, the browser searches for a domain name "businessmentor.com" before attempting "businessmentor.net", etc. As such, people who do that will be delivered to your competitor's site if you do not also own the ".com" extension.

If you get a domain name with an extension other than ".com", make sure that you promote your business or website with the full domain name. For example, if your domain name is "softballgames.net", make sure that when you advertise your site or business, call it "softballgames.net" not "softballgames". Otherwise people will assume a ".com" extension and travel to the wrong place.

 

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