There is a lot spoken about selecting the right domain name for your web site and this blog is one more of them, but I am hoping to give some pointers in making a decision that is right for you both from a product and a personal point of view.
Up to now I have sold affiliate products of one sort or another so have looked to find a suitable site name that references the product I am selling. For example, if I was looking to sell an affiliate product that promised “Great Abs” then the simple solution would be to take out the name www.greatabs.com so that the domain clearly indicates the product being sold.
The problem comes when the most popular domain names are taken and you need to find a lesser alternative, but, where possible to get global presence, you should always look to use the .com suffix. You can use a hyphen and see if great-abs.com has been taken, but if you are late to the party, most keyword specific domains will have gone and you may have to be constructive in your searching for the right name by the use of hyphens (no more than one please!) or adding words before or after to get you back to a suitable .com site name.
Why, you may ask, are keyword specific domain names important? The reason is that the various search engines appreciate as much help as you can give them when searching so if the domain name is greatabs.com and someone is searching for great abs then you are going to be easy for them to find and if you have done the correct search engine optimization (SEO) of your site, it will rank highly, hopefully on page 1 of the rankings!
Moving forward I am looking to develop my own products so I want people to know that it is me and my products that are being sold so I am looking for a suitable domain based around my own name. Again if your name is Xavier Zapello, then the chances of xavierzapello.com being available are very, very high, but if your name is, say, John Smith, don’t even think of looking for the easy option.
I fell between the two and all the simple Dave Thomas combination domains were taken, but I decided to tack on the word online at the end and here you are on my blog for davethomasonline.com.
So you can have a domain name as anything in reality, but if you are using a domain name like crunchyfrog.com, this will not help people or the search engines determine what exactly the business behind the name is and you might find customers hard to come by.
So in conclusion, if I am selling a product, I look for a product specific domain name that is keyword rich, but as I am now aiming to become synonymous with good, self-developed products, I am using my own name to create a bond with the reader and hopefully a buyer.
I’d be interested to hear about your domain name and how you came up with it and do you think it helps or hinders your on line business?
