Building a Credible Website

Choosing a Domain Name

Your domain name will be one of the most important things you choose when setting up your internet business.  Not only will your domain name impact your search engine ranking for keywords relevant to your business, but it will directly impact your corporate branding and identity as well as facilitate repeat customers and word of mouth advertising. People trust and find websites with their own domain name much more trustworthy and credible, than a website piggy backing on the domain name of someone else.  If you have a blog or business on the web, always use your own domain name. 

 Keyword Generated vs. Creative Genius.

There is great debate as to whether or not your domain name should be chosen based on the keywords you wish to rank in the search engines for, or should be something creative that will stick in the heads of users. The best way to decide which method you will adopt when selecting your domain name is to first identify how you will primarily be driving traffic to your website. 

If your website is primarily going to be relying on search engine traffic for customers you should give serious thought to using a Keyword Generated name and use keywords you are targeting for good placement and use those in your domain name.  Some examples of these domain names are marketingtips.com, hosting.com, and Business.com.  The keywords used in your domain name will factor in on your search engine ranking.  

The other option is to go with a user selected domain name.  If you are going to be relying on social networking, viral marketing, and word of mouth advertising for your primary source of traffic, you will want to think of a domain name that is creative, unique, fun and easy to remember.  Google, eBay, YouTube, Yahoo, and Flickr are all very popular and successful websites who clearly don’t have domain names that were keyword selected.  These sites focus on viral, or word of mouth advertising, to drive traffic and exposure, and so their domain names reflect that.   

If your website is going to be relying on a combination of both types of marketing and is not favorable to one traffic source or the other, you can certainly use a combination of the two methods above.  It is possible to create a domain name that is both unique and creative, but also relates to what your website does.  Myspace.com, HotorNot.com, and PlentyofFish.com are websites that don’t necessarily contain keywords that people are using to search for what they do on the internet, but they convey exactly what they do in their domain name.

If you’re an existing business, your domain name should reflect your business name.  If your business name was Boy Oh Boy, most people would search for those words on Google or would go to boyohboy.com.  If your business name is Boy Oh Boy try and use the same domain name.  It seems intuitive, but you would be surprised how many companies use a different URL and company name.

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