Forming a domain strategy is an integral part of anyone’s online marketing campaign. To have your domain name work for you and your business from a branding and search engine optimisation point of view, which results in increased traffic and business visibility for your site, isn’t just as straight forward as picking a name out of a hat. So how do you form a good strategy and how do you monitor it to ensure it is achieving the desired results?
Its all about your business objectives; what do you want out of your business? What services or products do you offer? What perception do you want to convey? Do you want to remain generic or build a brand. Asking yourself questions like these will form the basis of a strong domain strategy.
Say you sell umbrellas…Lets ask the question: Do you want to become a brand, or stay generic? If it is the latter, then umbrellas(dot)com would be the ideal domain, it is, in a nutshell THE domain for umbrellas. If you want a brand then keepdry(dot)com could be a cool name to use. The beauty of domain names is that it is completely irrelevant what your business is called offline. Your domain name is the key to what you want your business to become ONLINE.
Geographical location of your business and your target audience is also a very important factor to consider when choosing a good domain name. Search engines place certain “weighting” on geographical domains if the end user is from the same location; in their attempt to provide the most relevant search results to the customer. For example if your target audience is solely in the UK it would be more beneficial to register a .co.uk domain name as consumers will feel your website is more relevant to them than a .net or .us domain. This isn’t just an assumption either, if you search for the Nominet 2008 industry report in any good search engine you will be able to see some extremely useful demographics and reports on the domain name industry and how consumers relate to different top level domains or TLDs.
Search engine optimisation and online marketing should also be considered before choosing a domain. It is always worth speaking to an SEO or online marketing company prior to jumping in at the deep end and developing any old website on the first domain name that comes into your mind. You will be surprised the difference it can make. They may even suggest registered several domain names depending on your business objectives.
As far as I am concerned, planning a good domain strategy should be considered as a primary, not secondary part of any online marketing campaign. It should integrate smoothly with your offline marketing efforts, online marketing and search engine optimisation, your business objectives, search engines themselves and ultimately your end users.
Its all about your business objectives; what do you want out of your business? What services or products do you offer? What perception do you want to convey? Do you want to remain generic or build a brand. Asking yourself questions like these will form the basis of a strong domain strategy.
Say you sell umbrellas…Lets ask the question: Do you want to become a brand, or stay generic? If it is the latter, then umbrellas(dot)com would be the ideal domain, it is, in a nutshell THE domain for umbrellas. If you want a brand then keepdry(dot)com could be a cool name to use. The beauty of domain names is that it is completely irrelevant what your business is called offline. Your domain name is the key to what you want your business to become ONLINE.
Geographical location of your business and your target audience is also a very important factor to consider when choosing a good domain name. Search engines place certain “weighting” on geographical domains if the end user is from the same location; in their attempt to provide the most relevant search results to the customer. For example if your target audience is solely in the UK it would be more beneficial to register a .co.uk domain name as consumers will feel your website is more relevant to them than a .net or .us domain. This isn’t just an assumption either, if you search for the Nominet 2008 industry report in any good search engine you will be able to see some extremely useful demographics and reports on the domain name industry and how consumers relate to different top level domains or TLDs.
Search engine optimisation and online marketing should also be considered before choosing a domain. It is always worth speaking to an SEO or online marketing company prior to jumping in at the deep end and developing any old website on the first domain name that comes into your mind. You will be surprised the difference it can make. They may even suggest registered several domain names depending on your business objectives.
As far as I am concerned, planning a good domain strategy should be considered as a primary, not secondary part of any online marketing campaign. It should integrate smoothly with your offline marketing efforts, online marketing and search engine optimisation, your business objectives, search engines themselves and ultimately your end users.
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