Important Tips When Naming Your Website or Blog

In this day and age, having an online presence for your business is essential, especially if you are starting up a new business and don’t have a band of loyal customers yet. An important step when building your website or blog, is branding. Branding requires thought as to what you want your appearance to be and what will stick in the minds of your visitors.  Here are some tips and considerations to keep in mind when choosing a domain name for your brand.

Choose a Memorable Domain Name

When you finally find the right web hosting service, the first thing you’ll have to do when setting up is to choose a domain name.  Often good domain names are taken.  You will have to do a whois lookup to see if your domain is available or for sale.

When deciding on a domain name, remember to make it memorable and uncomplicated (avoid hyphens, numbers and unconventional spelling, for example) to ensure your business can reap all the benefits of word-of-mouth advertising.

Choose a domain name that is ion accordance to your business, product or service more clearly it should be related to what you sell or what you do. It should be catchy and easy to remember.  Once a visitor comes to your site it will be easy to keep you domain name in mind. Moreover, the domain extensions (like .com, .net) have a role to play in search engine rankings. Generally .com and .org domain extensions rank comparatively higher in the search engine rankings.

Someone who stumbles upon your website shouldn’t have to do investigative work to figure out what, exactly, it is that you do. That means clearly stating your name and summing up your products or services right on the homepage.

Don’t make things complicated.  Your domain name is like your brand. It should be easy for a user to type it into a Web browser or an e-mail address.

Users are conditioned to type .com extensions when they enter a Web address. For non-profits or organizations, consider using a .org domain for branding purposes; having a .com version of the domain in case a user accidentally types the .com address is also beneficial.

SEO Basics

Avoid dashes (which can cause SEO headaches) and numbers (which can cause confusion for customers).  Research high volume keywords and combine it with your brand.

Your website won’t do you as much good if no one can stumble upon it. Become familiar with the SEO basics to make it more accessible by search engine.

You don’t need to employ mysterious, ninja, black hat SEO types to rank well on the search engines. Simply make sure your website is coded correctly.  That means using the correct keywords throughout your text, putting in plenty of links, naming your page titles and URLs correctly, and employing the magic of images and videos.

Protect your Brand

Trademark your brand and copyright your content.  Have you ever tried to purchase a domain, only to find that it’s already taken and merely goes to a landing page trying to sell it for more? This practice you’ve just come across is called, Cybersquatting, or domain squatting. The United States has a federal law known as the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, which protects the registering, trafficking in, or using an Internet domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. A cybersquatter usually offers to sell their purchased domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an higher price.

If you are looking to protect your brand or license it, the only way to ensure that your idea is protected is to file a trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The process can be lengthy and the steps involved may be intimidating for most. Prior to getting involved with an attorney and parties necessary to complete your application, here are some other steps to keep in mind.

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