What's in a domain name?

Recently there has been a great deal of talk by our clients and online concerning domain names.  Mainly, the discussion flows around the agitation surrounding the inability to get specific domain names.  But there are so many more issues surrounding domain naming.  Below are some to ponder:

The Domain you want is taken
These days, domain buying has reached an all time high (or low depending on how you look at it).  For some time all two letter and three letter domains ending in dot com have been purchased.  Now, reportedly the same phenomenon is occurring with four letter domains ending in dot com (certainly the same is happening with five and six letter domains).

According to some, the shorter the domain name, the better.  The belief behind this theory is that shorter domains are more memorable and people are less likely to misspell them.  This is not always the case and is especially not true when you consider the pack of new companies that are creating four letter company names/domain names in order to have a short domain.  If you are creating a word, then people are probably not going to know how to spell it.

A memorable (easy to associate), clear, well-branded domain name can exist in a longer than five letter domain.  There are many examples of recent excelling domains that have more than five letters, examples include:  Wikipedia.com, Myspace.com, and Facebook.com to name a few.

Unavailable domain name issues do not mean the end.  Larry Page and Sergey Brin (founders of Google) decided long ago that they wanted to change the name of their search engine which was originally coined, BackRub.  They spend gobs of time considering what they wanted to name the engine and came up with Googol (a math term for 10 to the 100th power).  Googol.com was unavailable but Google.com was available.  Thus the domain google.com is in existence because of an unavailable domain.  The moral of the story is, don't lose heart if the domain name you want is unavailable.

The Domain you want can be bought - But what a price!
Domain names that have never been purchased fetch the approximate fair price of $9.99 a year.  Recently Business.com sold for the astronomical price of $350 million.  As you can see, there is quite a disparity between pricing.  I do believe that everyone should consider and treat domain names as undeveloped land.  Depending on the land there could be quite a return on investment.  But, really $350 million?!

If there is a domain name you want, we recommend that you consult a professional domain name buyer.  At Smart Solutions, we can insure that you are making a fair and sound investment on your domain name.  Contact us and we'll get your questions answered.

SEO Ramifications
Domain names do have some search engine optimization ramifications.  Google and the other search engines are very tight-lipped about their algorithms but through testing this is understood and widely accepted.

The elements of your domain name that effect your search engine optimization efforts are:  domain name age and keywords within your domain.  The latter is believed to provide an insignificant effect on your search engine optimization efforts; basically if all else is equal, keywords in your domain might have some affect on your ranking for them.  Some examples of success without keywords in their domain are amazon.com and monster.com; clearly both domains have nothing to do with the keywords of interest to the sites and both sites are widely popular.

If a searcher does type your exact domain into the search bar (direct navigation or type-in traffic), the search engines will rank your site.  This doesn't mean that your site will rank number one.  Other websites can rank above you if they are optimizing their site.

Domain age seems to be the most important element of domains in terms of search engine optimization.  With this knowledge, you might have a different opinion on what a domain name is worth.

Domain Name and your Brand
The name of your company or product is a huge part of your brand.  Your company name is what distinguishes you from all of the other businesses and products out there.  Today it is even more difficult to name your company or product because you need to consider what your domain name will be.  You can do well if your company name is not the same as your domain name.  Many people do it, take us for example.  But, we assure you, life is easier when your company name and domain name are one in the same.

So if you are in the process of naming your company or product, don't get too attached to a name before you visit a domain registrar to ensure the availability of a domain.