Search Engine Optimization, Online Marketing & Web Development Services
Choosing a good web address for a new web site
Published 03/24/2009
There are several things to consider when selecting a web address. Also called a URL or domain name, your web address should meet these following criteria.
- Easy to remember – This includes the order of the words as well as the words themselves. (Was that davis roberts or robert davis…?)
- Easy to spell – Avoid words that people commonly have trouble spelling. It’ll save you misery when you’re trying to give your URL over the phone and help avoid typos in any press coverage you get, too.
- Contains keywords (your industry, location, etc.) While it’s sometimes debated whether there are any optimization benefits, all things equal, it may help. Use hyphens to separate the words so the search engines can recognize the separate words (seo-advantage.com versus seoadvantage.com). But make sure you buy both versions, so you can redirect any people who enter your URL without the hyphens.
- Brief – What’s a good length? Well, that depends. Don’t sacrifice the other criteria just to have a short URL – your initials, for example, are not going to carry a lot of benefit unless your business is very famous (GM.com, for example). But don’t make your web address so long and full of keywords that people will confuse the order or leave out words if they’re trying to enter it directly. Consider that it should also look good on your business cards, brochures and other marketing materials.
The web address you choose will be influenced by your business name and situation. If your company is well known or its name already meets some of the criteria above, you’ll be best off simply using your business-name.com or businessname.com. After all, that’s your brand, and you want to build it to the max. Another thing to keep in mind is that you can purchase multiple domain names that you think people may try to type in to find you and then point them all at your main address.
Some final advice: Get impressions from a few people before you settle on your web address. You never know what a set of new eyes can pick up that you might have missed. We wouldn’t have these hilarious URLs to poke fun at if the owners had done that: Experts Exchange: www.expersexchange.com; IP Anywhere: www.ipanywhere.com; Speed of Art; www.speedofart.com...you get the idea!
About SEO Advantage
SEO Advantage, Inc. is an online marketing /search engine optimization firm that helps businesses turn their web presence into a powerful revenue generation medium. Our clients enjoy dominance on Google, Yahoo and Bing through a suite of unique pay-for-performance search engine optimization and online marketing services implemented by a multidisciplinary team of SEO engineers, copywriters, and web designers. You'll find us referenced in books such as Writing Web-Based Advertising Copy to Get the Sale and the BusinessWeek bestseller The New Rules of Marketing & PR, as well as the popular ebook The Small Business Blogging Blueprint. Find out more today. Visit www.seo-advantage.com, call 1-800-366-1639 or email us here.
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