 Choosing the right domain name is one of the most important decisions you have to make when starting a new e-commerce business. Brand name or Keyword Many new e-commerce businesses make the mistake of using their company name for their website. This may be OK if you've got a very well known brand name that people are liable to search for, but for most businesses it is best to choose a domain name that contains keywords that relate to their products or business expertise. Having a keyword in your domain name is a big advantage in getting a good ranking in the search engines - and therefore in getting more traffic. Of course there are other factors involved in getting good search engine ranking, but any search of google will show sites with the keyword in the domain name near the top of the results. Easy to Spell Ideally, the best domain name is short and easy for customers to remember and type. Unfortunately, most of the good, short, single word domain names are already taken. So that leaves domain names made of two or more words. This can work in your favour because you can get more than one keyword in your domain name, or a likely keyword phrase. Hyphen or no Hyphen There is a lot of discussion as to whether to use hyphens in the domain name or not. Some people say that is best to combine the words into one, as mynewwebsite.com, rather than hyphenate it as my-new-website.com. Supporters of this idea say that it is easier to type and easier for people to remember. One argument is that if you are on a radio chat show and you have to give out the website address, it is confusing to the audience for you to say "my HYPHEN new HYPHEN website.com". There is some truth in this, especially when telling people the address over the phone, however, if most of your traffic is coming from search engines, this problem goes away, as people will simply click on the link. In this case, having hyphens between the words is an advantage. Search engines can pick up the keywords more easily, leading to better ranking and more traffic. In addition, people scanning a page full of search engine results will find it easier to read your domain name if the words are seperated by hyphens, rather than an unintelligible string of letters. Hyphens can make it clear what your domain name and therefore your products are. If you are looking for for a birthday present for your young child, would you be more likely to click on middlesextoys.co.uk or middlesex-toys.co.uk? Don't forget that potential customers searching the internet may have thousands of results to choose from. Anything that leads them to choose your site rather than your competitors is a valuable advantage. Be careful though - more than 1 hyphen in a domain name is rumoured to flag the site as a spam site by Google. Domain Extension The domain extension is the letters following the dot at the end of a domain name, such as .com. This is known as the top level domain, or TLD. The TLD is supposed to indicate what type of site the domain refers to, eg .com for company, .org for organisation etc. In addition, there are Country code TLDs (ccTLD). These are the two letter codes assigned to each country. Examples commonly seen are .uk for England, .au for Australia etc. Most advice on the web is to make sure you get a .com domain name. However, this advice is usually given from a US perspective; in other countries, the ccTLD is just as acceptable; in Britain the .co.uk domain extension is just as familiar with people as .com. |
