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Business Social Media - Domain Name Guide

by barryhurd

On the web, your name can (and is) your reality. However naming
yourself online isn't that simple. Choosing a domain name for a
business web presence is one of the most critical items in your
promotional venture: your domain name will be the nexus of your
business for months, years, or even decades.

There are a list of things you should consider before embarking
down your online venture:

1) Define your brand. It is more than words, but will be
flavored by them. Your business brand is an image of who you are.
Ask your friends, family, and peers what your ideas inspire when
the words are read.

2) The idea of a business brand is to be memorable, yet
effective in communicating the purpose of your business. It is
usually more effective to focus on communicating your purpose,
rather than just developing your widget as a term.

3) If you can't get a com extension, choose again. There are
plenty of other extension like net and info, but whatever case
that is: you will need to also have the com extension or risk
losing your brand before it has ever been established.
(Businesses should register the com, net, info extensions for a
business)

4) If you think of related names in the process, register them
today. $10 today is a lot cheaper than the impossibility of
getting it tomorrow.

5) Keep it short. A good domain name should be one to three
words long. It should not include hyphens or any other characters
that are out of place. Shorter domains are generally better for
two basic reasons: they are easier to spell and remember.

6) Don't be scared of going long. Yes, I just said "keep it
short", but having a long domain name has the benefit of saying
exactly what you do. Long domains also pull some weight in
keyword search results, so having "real estate" in a real estate
domain helps a site rank for those terms.

7) Multiple Domains are Okay! So many businesses lock on to the
idea of having one site to send readers to. While having focus is
good, multiple domains and sites allows a company to have
different presentations for different audiences. Multiple domains
and sites can also allow a single business to have multiple
results in search engines, which allows them to conquest the
first page of search results on terms that drive results.

8) Recognize how you can misspell your own domain. If you have
any words that do not carry clearly when spoken or are easy to
misspell, register the misspelled version of the keywords. $10
for a misspelled version of your own site name is a very
affordable way of preventing client loss or competitive problems
in the future.

9) Buy alternate domain names today. At less that $10 a piece,
alternate domain names can provide a very reliable way to promote
your business and help protect your reputation. If you have any
public figures in the business, make sure to spend the $10 to buy
personal name domains (firstnamelastname) and any slogans or
catch phrases.

10) Realize that your domains are being promoted to both humans
and search robots. They each like slightly different things and
you should create a strategy for having multiple domains and how
they coordinate relevant traffic to your business.
 
Bonus point: If you are trying to use a new domain for
competitive search engine ranking, register the domain for five
years. Search engines give credit to the length of a registration
to help identify if a new site is a spam site being used to
manipulate the search results. By committing to a longer stay,
you help establish your virtual reputation in the eyes of engines
like Google and Yahoo.

Do not jump the gun! Remember that a domain choice has many
different angles to it. It can easily be compared to choosing a
real world location for your business: where will it be? what
does the neighborhood say? who will see it? how long will you be
using it?

If you are a small business, then $50 to $100 to secure a domain
name for a few years may seem like a major investment. For larger
companies, spending $500 to $1000 for a larger competitive search
optimization and brand protection effort is a good investment
(for instance, do you own yoursitesucks?)

Understanding that a good domain may mean the difference between
five visitors a month or five thousand, greatly changes how your
business functions online. With a well organized strategy behind
multiple domains, different niche streams of visitors become
easier to reach and increase the chance that they will convert
into business results.

Barry Hurd is President, author, speaker, and voice of 123 Social
Media - <a
href="http://123socialmedia.com/2008/07/16/business-social-media-a-domain-name-guide/">Business
Social Media and Promotion</a>. He has a history of over fifteen
years working on numerous innovative efforts with online business
models: past projects have included NIKE, REI, TMP Worldwide,
Monster.com, Verizon Superpages, Intuit, and RIS Media.

Syndicated by Top Gazebos - www.topgazebos.net

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