Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Let me explain:
A domain name is very different to a company name. Although you should have as close to your company name (or its abbreviation) as you can get, there is another audience you need to think about – the search engines. A domain name is a very good ingredient to help your site rank highly in your most important keyword or keyphrase.
So let's say your business is a restaurant called Zoe's Italian Restaurant in the Sydney CBD and the keywords most of your market are searching are: italian restaurant sydney. Having the domain name: zoesitalianrestaurantsydney.com.au might work ok for the search engines, but it is too much of a mouthful to tell your customers on the phone and much too long for your business cards.
You can point any number of domains to a website as 'aliases' of the main domain, so why not have two? In this case, register zoes.com.au or zoesitalian.com.au or zoessydney.com.au and the generic search domain: italianrestaurantsydney.com.au and if that domain is already taken, try spacing the words with hyphens: italian-restaurant-sydney.com.au. You can also try and get the .net.au domain as an alternative too.
When you set up your website (or your webmaster does), submit your search engine friendly domain to directories and search engines and give your human friendly name out in business cards, on the phone, in advertisements etc, and use it for your email.
Don't worry about your business name not coming up in searches, there is far less competition for your unique business name than for your industry, so the copy on your website should ensure it is placed highly in the results page.
If you're not sure what the best keyword phrase is for your business (the one that is searched the most), ask your webmaster, or the person who is doing your Search Engine Optimisation. That subject alone would take a whole article to cover.
Mike BarkerInternet Business Consultant
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