Why should your domain name be part of your marketing
strategy?
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
If you're planning on marketing a product or service, then a keyword rich
domain name that says who you are, what you do and what unique benefits your
product or service provides should be part of your domain name choice and part
of your marketing strategy. For more information on how you can use this
strategy to attract targeted traffic.
Grab a dot com domain name over all other TLD's if it's available. There's a
lot of hype regarding the value of some other TLD's. Some will argue that
because the availability of good dot com names is supposedly dwindling, its time
to start registering what's available for other TLD's. Dot com was the first
universally recognizable TLD. It kinda has the name recognition and branding
popularity of Q-tips and Kleenex. It's almost assumed that if you've got a
website, it's a dot com. The supposed increase in popularity of other TLD's
might be the self fulfilling prophecy of cyber squatters intent on grabbing "the
next big thing" on the cheap.
Reselling expired dot com domain names at "through the roof" prices is pretty
much over except in some rare instances, but until you start to see other
expiring TLD's besides .com and .net up for sale or on domain name auction
sites, the laws of supply and demand will prevail. Dot com domain name if you
can, dot net domain name if you can't.
| Domain Name Fact: There are over 250
top-level-domains. Over 240 2 letter TLD's correspond to countries and
territories around the globe. The remaining TLD's are either sponsored
generic like .edu and .mil or unsponsored generic like .com .net |
Tips for choosing a domain name.
Research your target market for keywords relevant to your products or
services and their benefits and solutions. Overture and Google have free
utilities. Wordtracker provides more accurate data, but it can get expensive.
Assemble your keyword list and phrase them into names that are catchy, easy to
remember, while trying to describe your product's or service's benefits. Test
your best choices on unsuspecting individuals and register your top five names.
You'll be tempted to register your company name as a domain name because most
people worry about branding. Don't get ahead of yourself here. People are
looking for products, services or information related to benefits and solutions.
I don't wanna sound "insensitive," but nobody really cares about your company's
name.
Register domain names that will get traffic to your site and forget about
becoming the next Amazon.com. Register your "branding" or company name to use
for print advertising like business cards, yellow page ads, postcards, etc. For
small businesses, branded domain names are great, but only after your target
market finds you.
If you choose a domain name that's easy to remember, then you'll make it a
lot easier to integrate your website with your offline marketing strategy. Steal
a page from the 1-800 handbook. 1-800-fly-jets is a lot easier to remember than
1-800-359-5387. Catchy keyword phrases work well for Internet marketing.
| Domain Name Fact: Currently, a
domain name can be up to 63 characters, not including the TLD. The only
acceptable characters are letters, numbers and hyphens. |
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