Published on September 20, 2010 The importance of the right domain name for a new business startup
Your domain name is a big part of your online brand, so it’s very important that you have it right. Before starting an online business, think very carefully about the name you will choose for your business, the business name you will register and the domain name you will use.
This is more than just choosing a domain name that is available to be registered, it’s about choosing a domain name that is truly unique and easy for your customers to remember. An easy-to-remember name is something that will be picked up by search engines quickly and ultimately will allow you to own.
As an example, think about the success of the Search Engine Google. They didn’t choose to name their product something with the word search or find in it, or use a name that was related to these words. With some time and effort in planning, it wouldn’t have been too difficult for them to find a name that wasn’t trademarked by anyone else, whose domain name was available and that related to the product that they were selling. But they didn’t. They went with something completely different that was a single word that they could own.
So have Yahoo! and Bing.
By having something completely different they could own their name and misspellings of their name, without accidentally redirecting customers to other providers. We see many customers come to us who want to register a domain with a .net.au extension because a competitor has the same domain name with the .com.au extension. We think this is not a good strategy at all, because if a potential customer enters your domain name wrong, they will go to a competitors site. It will take a LOT more money in promotion and advertising to make a name top of mind for customers this way, and you are potentially just giving traffic away to your competitors.
We suggest that if you are starting a business from scratch you think carefully about what you want to achieve and do what Google, Yahoo and Bing did. Choose your own unique name, and make it yours. It will help your search engine optimisation and your business build a memorable brand.
End Note: we are not saying that you can’t make a successful business online, especially if you already have a successful offline business with the same name, or there is a great domain name available that will deliver lots of search engine impressions for your industry. We are just saying that if you are starting from scratch, you may find it easier to do it the way that Google, Yahoo and Bing did and build a memorable brand – and use your domain name to reflect that.
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