So you have decided to start a business online. Your dream is to become a huge success, however, in order to stand out from the crowd you will want to focus on choosing a domain name for your business that is related to what your site is about.
People type in your domain name when they are looking for your website in particular. It will look something like this: www.mywebsite.com. It is your virtual real estate address.
The best thing that you can do for your website in order to get repeat visitors and free word-of-mouth traffic is to give it a memorable domain name. A domain name that people can remember without having to look it up all the time or having to bookmark it and losing it among all the others.
Some people will tell you that all the good names are gone, not true. I have listed several guidelines you can follow that will make your domain name and business a more popular web destination.
1. Choose a Dot-Com
As a rule, choosing a domain name for your business that ends with a dot-com or .com is the best. Dot-Com is considered the Main St. of the virtual real estate world. When someone types in a domain they automatically use .com regardless of what the actual extension is.
Even though .org and .net were popular for a time and later .biz and .us, people always come back to the .com – and it really never matters just how many country code domains are being used like .cc, .ws, .to, .cn and others.
2. Opt For Something Memorable
If at all possible, you will want your business name to also be your domain name. So if your flower shop is called Sandy’s Flower’s, you will want to try and get sandysflowers.com if it is available. If it isn’t, you could try it with a dash. Sandys-flowers.com or something descriptive such as sandysflowersonline.com or prettysandy’sflowers.com. Be creative and come up with something that is suitable to your business name and memorable to your clients.
If you do choose to use a dash in your domain name, some search engine optimization experts suggest that dashes somehow attract more free traffic to your site, you must remember to say the dashes in any commercials or audio products; so it would be “sandys dash flowers dot com”.
Most folks will forget to type in the dashes when typing in your domain name.
3. Get Another Variation
If you can get a good domain name without the dashes, then you should consider getting the same domain name but with the dashes in between the words. You will be able to put them both on your server as mirror sites to get the benefits of search engine optimization and no one else will be able to take that name. If someone types it in with the dashes it will redirect to your site.
You might want to also consider getting an extension such as .org or .net to use as a sister site to your main .com site. Your .com domain name can be used for your main product, your .net for your forum and .org for some of your background business info.
When choosing a domain name for your business and if the one that you really wanted is not available, you can use your creativity along with trying a variety of different combinations. This should enable you to come up with a memorable domain name that will attract clients to your website.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How do I find my mail server domain name?
By: toni | 06-08-2008
How do I find my mail server domain name?
Please reply to tzs13@aol.com as I doubt I'd ever be able to find my way back to here.
Thanks,
tzs13
Domain name vs. IP address: why can't I send email to Comcast customers?
By: Jetcity User | 12-06-2008
I am unable to send email to any Comcast customer from my company email. My webhost company has told me that my domain name (i.e. www.abcpi.com; not my real domain name) has been blocked but not the IP address associated with the domain name (i.e. 208.78.242.185). When you lookup the domain name for 208.78.242.185 you find webhost.dynadot.com. Is it possible that Comcast can block the name but not the IP address? In other words can they block abcpi.com but not webhost.dynadot.com even though the IP addresses are the same? Has anyone else had a similar problem and if so, how did you solve it? I'm getting nowhere with Comcast and their online forms. Thanks!
Using custom domain name for a web page
By: Scott the Rocker | 27-05-2008
I would like to build a webpage using my custom AOL domain name. Does AOL offer services in webhosting? if not, can I simply cancel my account and still get the same domain through another company, or do I have to transfer it? Any info on this would be great!
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