It can be difficult to think of good domain name. As no two parties may ever hold the same Domain Name at the same time, it is a truly unique identifier of you or your company. It is how your customers will remember you and find you among the millions of other Web sites on the Internet.
What is the influence of a domain name on your traffic and sales? How do you deal with multiple domains and should you have multiple domains? Here are a few things to keep in mind when choosing your domain name:
- Keep it short. Long domain names are not easy to remember. Keep in mind that most visitors will not just type in your domain name, they will find it through Google, Yahoo or other websites. For example, only 16% of the visitors come to this website by typing in the domain name. 25% come to this website through search engines and 59% come here by clicking on a link on another website. An easier name to remember will translate to a higher probability of repeat vistiors.
- Use a name that suits your goal. What do you want to do with your
website? Try to translate that "mission" into a domain. This can be difficult, as
you want to keep your domain short. Search engines heavily judge your website based on
a few items:
- What others have to say about your website.
- What words can be found in the actual domain name.
- What words can be found on the home page.
- What words can be found in the title and meta tags of your webpages.
- Promote only one domain. Search engines tend to discover how important a website is by counting the links to your website. If you have several domains in use, link them all to the site you want to promote the most. Search engines like Google will consider the importance of your website over the other domains. Focus on one domain, redirect everything to that single domain.
- Have links to all your domains. If you have more than one domain, link to them from your main domain. In my case, I refer to domains in articles like these. My main domain (now) is scottesolutions.com but I have ninthcircleradio.com, donhume.com, farrowcanada.com and saltwaterenterprises.com all linking to it.
Owning multiple domains can be good for your internet presence. Running multiple websites though is high maintenance and can be redundant if you're selling the same products. Branded and managed properly, one website should be able to sell anything for you. If all of your strategically named domain names redirect to a main domain, you will be better able to monitor the traffic and search phrases all under the one domain name.
There are a few other reasons why you could want to have multiple domains:
- Catching typos. Like domain names that contain then or than
- Preventing "copycat" sites. You'd be surprised how fast a copycat site can go up if you have a good idea!
- Preventing phishers and others from using what seems to be your domain. Consider a few; www.cocacola.com, www.coca-cola.com, and country specific domains
- Buying domains to hopefully sell them later. I do not think this is good, but maybe you do.
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