Hide your Brand Name for Better Results

You’ve created your brand, you’ve designed a logo and you’ve got great business cards. Now you need a website. So what domain name should you choose? The obvious choice is to register the .com or .ie of your business name, but this may not always be the best choice. Sometimes it’s better to avoid using this name entirely.

If your company name doesn’t immediately tell the customer what business you’re in then you shouldn’t use it as your website address. Let’s imagine a fictional web design company called J. Smith & Co. The obvious domain name for this company would be jsmithandco.com or smithandco.ie, but what does this domain tell the customer about the market the company operates in? Nothing. Just as importantly the search engines wont know that jsmithandco.com is a web design company and the domain will do nothing to help them get better search engine results.

So what name should they use? Well, as always the first thing to determine is the keywords that they want to target in the search engines. What search terms will potential customers use on Google and Yahoo to find website designers? The obvious ones that spring to mind are web design, website design, web designer, website designer, web development… you get the idea. So Smith & Co should incorporate at least some of these keywords in their domain name.

Armed with this knowledge Smith & Co would probably look for a domain name like webdesign.com. Unfortunately many domains like this are gone. How about smithwebdesign.com or websitedesignco.com. Either of these terms immediately informs the user of the services offered by the domain owners. It also gives the search engines a helping hand in categorising the website. Now when users search for web design Smith & Co will have a leg up on the competition.

It’s important to remember that getting a good search engine rating is a marathon, not a sprint. Each step you take in optimising your website will help a little (blogging will help a lot).

How about your domain name, is it working for you in the search engines? Do you need to change it to something more suitable. I’d love to, you’re thinking, but what about my email addresses at the current domain? No problem, simply setup a 301 redirect from your current domain to your new keyword rich domain and retain your old domain for email addresses.

As always, Irish Web HQ are here to help, and we can do it for you. Send us an email using our online form or meet us on the social networks (Twitter, Facebook) by clicking the icons below. Maybe you simply have a question about your domain. Feel free to comment using the form below or contact us online and we will try to help you.