What’s in a domain name

Domain names are basically your address on the web. It is your www.yournamehere.com. And it is more important then you might think. If you want a good reason why you can read this article about Guy Fieri. Guy Fieri a very popular restauranteur owns a restaurant called Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar BUT he does not own the domain name. The restaurants domain name is GuysAmerican.com. Someone else entirely owns the domain name and has made it into a parody. The parody site has gone so far as to have a fake menu with ridiculous names and ingredients. Now some say that any publicity is good publicity, but if you are a small business that won’t really be the case.

If you are just starting your business it is important to consider domain name when considering the business name.

Here are a few domain name tips:

1. You want to have a domain name that is as close as possible to your business name.
2. The more complicated your domain name the harder it is to remember.
3. Don’t use fancy spellings, if they are hard to spell people may end up at the wrong website.
4. If someone else owns the domain name (but is not using it) you may have to buy it from them for a lot of money.
5. If there are a lot of similar domain names then there is also more competition to rank in search engines. If you choose a name that is similar to a popular brand then you will always show up below them.
6. .com and .net rank better then .us, .co. and .biz
7. Do use descriptive words if it make sense. i.e. joesmiththerapy.com

If you are in the process of starting your business research domain names and your online competition before deciding. Network solutions has a great domain name search engine, you can see what is available or what variations are available.