Branding Internet Keywords.
Though having an internet search keyword or two in your domain name may tell others that that is a core focus of what you do, it may be more effective to go the other way and completely make up your own name. Google, ebay, Yahoo, Xerox, Pepsi are all made up and globally identifiable. But beware. Made up brands require customer education and time to make them effective. If you are starting small without a large marketing budget then a keyword brand might be the way to go.
If you are chosing a new domain name, try and chose something that is two or three words at the most. Why? Because not only are the domain names harder to remember, but they also have a better chance of being misspelled and allow business go to the competition if the competition has registered the mispelled domain name (this is called typosquatting).
Keyword Domain Brand Benefits.
Having a keyword in your domain name or internet brand gives you a huge competitive advantage when using search engines.
Click through rates on search engines and paid advertisements are a lot higher, and you get all of those highly descriptive inbound links that search engines love so much.
Keyword Domain Brand Drawbacks.
Simply - the competition is steep. There is a lower barrier to entry and you might have green-eggs.com brand opening up online in a market space that already has blue-eggs.com, red-eggs.com, yellow-eggs.com brands. The only way to differentiate your internet brand from the others would be by price or service. It is hard to do both, but if successfully done it could be the winning formula. A low volume and high price business is just as profitable as a high volume and low price business. The only difference is that the high volume business has to work harder for its money. If the customer doesn't mind paying more for better service, that is the way to go.
Using Dashes in Domain Names or Not?
This used to be a big thing a while ago when search engines used the domain name as a means of determining ranking relevancy. Not so much anymore. More important than a domain name without dashes, is something that is memorable and easy to spell. Green-eggs, blue-eggs, red-eggs, not much to hold the attention, but with volcanic-eggs we are starting to move in the right direction. With a little digging you should be able to find something without the dashes, or get us to search for the perfect domain name brand.
Good Branding goes beyond the domain name.
Good branding is all about the online experience had by your customers. If you can every day put yourself in the customers shoes, and find out what is important to them, and provide it to them, then you are well on the way to creating a good brand. Amazon, Dell, and Yahoo all started small and grew large.
With the right dedication and customer centric focus, you could one day too!
To build the perfect brand, or get completely set up online with a domain name, email address, and website give us a call or request a proposal. And when its all up and running, we can hook you up with Internet Marketing as well!
