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Maximizing the value of your domain name
By
Staff
You’ve chosen
the perfect domain name for your website. One
that solidifies your business image. Or so you
think! Make sure to choose a domain name that
reflects what your business is all about. For
instance, you don’t want the domain name
mechanics.com if you are selling shoes do you?
Choose a name that will not only be
representative of your products or services, but
will also portray your business in a
professional manner. Think before you buy!
Valuation of a domain name is both an art and a
science. Knowledge and experience in
understanding the factors that influence the
value of a domain name is the art, while
quantifying the importance of these factors is a
science. However, the reliability of appraisal
values cannot be accurately determined without
comparison of statistical models.
Due to their widespread
availability and low price, domain names can
often be bought on impulse. Most domains bought
this way are rarely used. Think about it
carefully before selecting a domain name. After
all, you will be stuck with it for at least a
year.
You then
registered your domain name and now you think
that it's going to pay for itself a hundred
times over. Well, you couldn’t be more wrong! No
matter what domain name you buy, it's not going
to pay for itself on its own. Just because you
think that you have chosen the most perfect
domain name, others may not agree. Registering a
domain name has become a lot cheaper over the
years. As your business grows, you will probably
want to register more domains. Don’t be swayed
to choose the cheapest, they may not necessarily
be the best. Remember that you get what you pay
for. Maximizing a domain name's value takes
thought, creativity and effort. It also requires
selecting a good name in the first place. That’s
where it all starts. There are ways though that
you can maximize the value of your chosen domain
name. Let’s look at a few suggestions to help
you do just that.
The Right Domain
Name Matters
A
domain name is your unique web site address and
the location of your website. By registering
your own domain name, you can distinguish
yourself and promote your business instead of
being one of millions of other users on one web
address (ex: @everyone.com). In addition, your
e-mail can be independent of your local ISP,
which means that you can change providers
anytime without changing your email address!
This is very important to keeping your
customers. While just about every word in the
English language has been registered one time or
another as a domain name, you may be talked into
using a name that is hyphenated or one that has
a funny-sounding acronym. You may think that it
will be easier to remember this way. Not so! The
reason is that in actuality hyphens make a
domain name longer. Although a domain like
Bobsinternetreservices.com is long, it's not as
long as bobs-internet-services.com. It can
become very cumbersome and more difficult for
people to remember because of all the pauses
caused by using hyphens in the first place. The
single most important thing that you NEVER
want to do is to make it difficult for people to
remember your domain name. You will never get
traffic to your site that way.
Website owners
often believe that hyphenated domains will
improve their Web site's ranking in search
engines. This is simply not true. Once upon a
time search engines looked at each word in
between hyphens as a keyword. A search engine
would then compare each keyword with the content
of your site, match it to the query of the user
performing the search, and then determine where
your site should appear in its listings
(ranking). Today, search engines are much
smarter; they look at a website's content and
little else. Because of that, hyphenated domain
names no longer have any influence on search
engine rankings. The best way to drive traffic
to your site is using a single name, even if it
has to be a little longer that you would like.
It’s better here to be safe than sorry later on.
Consider a
Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLD)
A Top
Level Domain or "TLD" is the most
commonly used code forming an Internet Domain
Name. Apart from the well-known extension codes
for domain names such as .com, .net, or .org,
there are many others, which are used to divide
the domain name space up geographically. A
Country Code Top Level Domain or “ccTld” on
the other hand has a country code as its suffix
instead of the typical .com, .net or .org
extension. Each country has its own domain
extension; Canada, for example, is .ca, while
Japan has been assigned .jp. From a functional
perspective, Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs)
work just as well as any Top Level Domain.
Today, more and more website owners are opting
for country-specific domains. This is die to the
fact that better names are typically readily
available than when choosing a domain under the
.com, .org or .net extensions. If all the
domains available for your site are extremely
long, it may be wise to consider purchasing a
ccTLD. As long as the domain name can provide
full functionality and regional branding, it
really wont’s matter want the extension is. The
downside to using cctld’s is loss of business
branding. If you can’t afford to publicize the
fact that your business is at yourbiz.to, then
you stand a chance that no one will have a clue
what your business is about. On the other hand,
if your site will only be listed on the
Internet, and won't be advertised on TV or
radio, you can probably get away with using a
cctld, including a .us domain. The key to all of
this is simplicity. Wherever possible it is
extremely important to your business image to
retain your own brand, whatever that is.
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