Choosing A Domain Name To Attract Targeted Customers

One of the fastest ways of getting attention for your business in today's world is to have a good online presence. And the first step to getting your business online is a good domain name.

Unfortunately, many people overlook this important step. Let's look at a few tips for getting a domain that will attract the right customers to your site.

1. Choose A Name That Describes Your Website

What your website offers should be clear from the domain name. Don't make your potential visitors guess at what they'll find on your website.

For example, if your name happens to be Sue Brown and you own a hair salon called Sue's Hair Salon, get a domain name like, sueshairsalon.com instead of suebrown.com. Seems pretty obvious, but you'll be amazed at how many business owners use their personal names as domain names instead of choosing one that specifically describes their business.

Also, try to keep your domain name within a range of 13-15 characters, as shorter domain names tend to stick in people's minds. It also makes it easier for them to type out your web address in their browsers without too much head scratching.

2. Select A Keyword-Rich Domain Name

Most websites rely on Google, Yahoo and other search engines for some (or most) of their traffic. If your business's keywords are included in your domain, you're more likely to rank higher in the results.

If you'd done the research and used these customer-specific keyword phrases in your domain name, more than likely your website will be listed on the very first page of the search engines, outranking your competitors because you had exercised due diligence where keyword-rich domain names were concerned.

Of course, there are other SEO tactics to implement for better rankings, but getting a keyword-rich domain name is the first step towards ensuring your website will be search engine friendly. Avoid using any weird characters like apostrophes and even hyphens in your domain name as this will eventually affect rankings.

3. Must A Domain Name End With .com?

Yes and no. You could use other extensions like .net, .biz or .info but it's not the best choice. Everybody knows .com but if your site uses something else, you're going to have to market it a lot harder to get the correct extension in people's minds. And if someone else already has the .com version, they'll probably get a lot of traffic from people looking for you.

How would you feel if you spend time and money marketing your website and some of those people wound up on your competitor's customer list instead?

Unless you're intentionally targeting to brand your business as, let's say, a nonprofit organization, in which case the .org extension is highly recommended, then sticking to the instantly recognizable .com extension is the best way to go.

So, don't rush headlong into purchasing a domain name without first taking the time to research keyword phrases that would be a perfect match for your product or service. You can perform this much needed research at websites such as wordtracker.com, keywordtumbler.com and goodkeywords.com. It requires some effort, but acquiring the keyword phrases that are used by prospects and incorporating them into your domain name will pay off handsomely for years to come.

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