A Winning Domain Name

A winning domain name can put you miles ahead of your competition. After all, that’s the purpose of your website, right? Unfortunately most business owners and webmasters don’t realize choosing the right domain name can be crucial to the websites success.

Good domain names have several things in common. They are descriptive of the websites content; they are easy to remember and easy to spell. Being descriptive of the websites content is the most important because this is how you will attract existing traffic to your website. If your website or business is in the shoe business, shoe better be in your domain name if you want to succeed.

Your domain name is your location on the internet. It’s your piece of virtual real estate that you can develop however you see fit. Your domain name separates you from the 120 million or so websites on the internet today. Choosing a winning domain name is the equivalent to choosing a good location for an offline business.

In order to be competitive an offline business must have a location that has existing traffic counts that will support their venture. The same is true for your website. Good domain names have the potential to capture existing traffic on the internet. That’s right “existing traffic” people already seeking the product or services you provide!

Traffic is the most sought after commodity on the internet. You can develop the website of all websites but without traffic who cares, no one will ever see it. Every website on the internet must have traffic to succeed and better yet, targeted traffic.

A winning domain name can deliver existing targeted traffic to your website from day one! When it comes to choosing the right domain name the vast majority of people, even professional webmasters, do not understand this concept. Good domain names have the potential to deliver targeted traffic to your website.

Existing traffic will come from two major sources, direct navigation or “type in traffic”, and the major search engines. Approximately 10 to 15% of all internet searches are done via direct navigation. Direct navigation is when a person types a domain name directly into the address bar bypassing the traditional search engines. If you are looking for shoes you would type in shoes.com and be taken to that website.

The major benefit of a winning domain name is having the potential to take the existing direct navigation traffic, and leverage it into mass amounts of targeted traffic, using proper search engine and website optimization practices. This in turn increases your search engine ranking.

The search engines consider many factors when ranking a page; the domain name is one of those factors. A good domain name is the foundation of a good website. Once you have the solid foundation, you develop a highly optimized website that enables you to leverage the traffic into profits.

For those that continue to think choosing the right domain name has no importance, why is the domain name industry booming? Major news stories on the domain name industry have recently been published in the New York Times, CNN Money, Fox Business and the Christian Science Monitor. Major sales over $4 million have already taken place in 2008. Major corporations are purchasing domain names. Don’t discount the importance of choosing a good domain name when developing your website, your competition may understand the value!