Domain Names Create a Location

In the offline world your business location has direct bearing on the success or failure of your business. The real estate adage location, location, location has been instilled into our mindset over the years with the vast majority of people understanding and believing this to be true.

The same holds true on the Internet. You must realize that your domain name is your location on the internet. It is your unique identifier that separates you from the 120 million or so websites in the world today. You promote your domain name the same way you promote your street address and telephone number for your offline business, so be wise when choosing a domain name.

Your domain name is the gateway to the internet. Without a domain name visitors will have no way of finding your website. The same is true if you choose a domain name that has no relevance to your website content, that is hard to spell or hard to remember. A good domain name is both descriptive of the website content and easy to remember.

To make a comparison to the offline business world I used to own a restaurant in an “out of the way” location. It was an awesome 3 story building constructed in 1885 with a unique architecture style copied by no other building in the area. The place had great food, service and ambiance with restaurant reviews to prove it. The problem; customers could not find us! That’s a huge problem!

The solution; spend a ton of money on advertising! I had the product I just needed to get the word out to potential customers. Our location was definitely the drawback, no foot traffic and little drive-by traffic. I had to educate the marketplace about the restaurant and what we offered.

After about 2 years of heavy promoting via radio, newspapers, billboards, direct mail, networking, website and e-mail marketing we developed a loyal customer base that sustained for years to come. Even with that, I still had to spend more than average on advertising due to the location.

Now compare the restaurant scenario with domain names. The restaurant was located in an “out of the way” location so I had to spend a ridiculous amount of money on advertising to educate the marketplace. Now if I had chosen a better location my advertising costs would have been much lower and my profits higher.

The same goes for domain names. When choosing a name don’t settle for a name because it’s available or sounds cool make sure it is relevant to your website content, easy to spell and easy to remember. In other words don’t develop a website about dogs and get the domain name “Cats.com” or you too will have to spend a ton of money on advertising to get visitors to your site.