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04.29.09 Domains Are As Important To Your Brand As Your Brand Itself  By
Peter Da Vanzo Choosing a domain name for a new project can be a little daunting. All the good names are gone. Once you find something acceptable, you'll have to be sure you can live with it for a long time. And what about the implications for SEO? So many considerations. Do You Want A Disposable Domain Name? Some domains are throw-away, so the domain name doesn't matter so much. buy-viagra-online-cheapest.com might be just fine for someones 100th pharma site. We all know it's going to be blitzed eventually, anyhow ;) For such domains, brand is never going to be a major consideration. But for most other projects, I'd recommend devoting time to brand considerations and credibility factors. Why? Traffic Comes From Everywhere Obviously, traffic doesn't just originate at search engines. The way things are going, the webmasters who used to frequently link to sites will just Twitter about you instead! Word of mouth is becoming more and more important on the web. The most popular websites today facilitate personal publishing. In order to capitalize on this, it is helpful to have a brand name that is easy for people to remember. It should be distinctive. It should be credible. It should be something people feel comfortable passing on. When people mention you in the context of a social network, are they going to talk about cheap-mp3-online-buy-cheapest.com? Would they feel comfortable recommending it to their friends and networks of contacts? Does it make them look good? Will they remember your domain name five minutes later? Would it be something they'll pass on? Even those webmasters who do link out tend to be cagey about where they link. The last place they'll link to is the trashy looking domain name. The credibility of a domain name in such an environment counts for a lot.
Brand Naming Strategy Brand is a is a collection of experiences and associations connected with a service, a person or any other entity What does "Google.com" mean to you? An incorrectly spelled mathematical term meaning 1 followed by 100 zeros? I'm guessing Google means finding things, making money, technology, the future, and various other experiences. That's the power of brand. Made-up, memorable "meaningless" words become incredibly valuable and significant. That's ok for big companies who spend a lot of money on building these associations, but what about the site owned by the little guy? One idea is to use soft branding. Leverage off a concept that is already known, and twist it a little. For example, an xml feed product that acts like a mail client might use the term "mail" in the brand name, because people are already familiar with the concept of mail. "Hotmail" is an example of soft branding. AfterMail is a service that retains copies of emails sent by employees and holds them in a central database. The brand name is partly unique and memorable, and partly describes the function. Good Domain Names Appreciate Continue reading this article. About the Author: Peter Da Vanzo is the founder of Search Engine Blog.com, a news resource for the search engine marketing industry. He is also a regular contributer on SEO Book. |
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