2009-06-12
Your Domain Name is Essential to the Success of Your Website
A crucial building block in setting up a website is the registration of a domain name. Whether you are building a site to advertise your local business, an e-commerce site, photo or video or music download site, information site, or if you want to start up a website to feature your family dog Spot, the entire undertaking begins with the choice of a domain name.
Then again you might ask- “What is a good choice of domain name?”. There are various factors to take into consideration. The domain name chosen for a family and friends website won’t be as crucial as with other types of sites. Why? Most likely in that case you’re not looking for lots of traffic, your site is probably only something you are going to produce for family and friends, to keep them up to date. So your domain name choice in a case like that is not as essential as it would be if you were looking for tons of traffic to the site.
The point is that in a case like this, there is no real concern with getting a lot of visitors to the website other than friends and family and coworkers, so there is no real harm in naming the website ANYTHING, because you will be giving out the website address to a select few people. BUT……
What if you are looking to attract customers? And to get as much traffic coming to your site as possible?
It really can bring huge dividends to have a domain name that reflects your company name and website. Put some thought into how people search. For example, if your company sells insurance or doughnuts or bowling pins or toilet bowls, find a way to incorporate WHAT YOU DO in the website domain name. So be sure and choose carefully when deciding on a domain name. Best case scenario is to get the name of your business as a dot com or dot net, etc. In lieu of that, at least try to get the category of business that you are in incorporated in your domain name. For example, an antiques website should have a domain name like antiques.com or bobsantiques.com, something that immediately associates the domain name with the theme of the site. It’s all about branding, and making a lasting impression on the target audience or customers.
You need to search the WhoIs database to find a domain name that has not already been registered. For your convenience in searching, I have conveniently placed a domain name search engine on StartMyWebsiteToday.com for this very purpose. When searching for the domain name, you will instantly know whether or not the domain name is available, and if so, give you the option to immediately register it. If it’s not available, several alternative domain names will be proposed, to help you fine tune your search, or possibly giving you an acceptable alternative domain name to register instead.
