Warning when choosing a domain name for your website

[Account Closed]

This is probably common knowledge for most people, I just wish I had thought about it at the time. When I first created my domain name I couldn't find anything that had not yet been taken already in line with the industry I was creating it for, so I made up a name. Probably dumb because you get better search engine ranking when your market name is in the domain. I figured I would just try to brand name it over the long haul.

A couple of problems I have learned since then (not big issues but still), you want an easy to remember name: short and sweet. You want to check it in Google to see what else might be close to it out there. I figured since mine was a mdae up word this wouldn't be an issue until I was speaking with a colleague of mine that was like "Isn't that a face cream or something?" I googled and sure enough theres a big company called Sephora lol.

The reason it's not a terribly big issue is because I am not depending on people to search my name as much as particular keywords/ other marketing techniques to bring them to my site, but still. If you can create a domain name even like "Aceflipshouses.com" or something with your industry name within it that is easy to remember then you will be much better off in the long run then trying to brand your own.

Like I said, this is probably common knowledge to most, just figured I'd share my mistake that some might learn from it.

[Mitch Kronowit]

Originally posted by Bryan Hancock:

Another thing to consider....don't put a "-" in your domain name.

The tip I heard was get at least 2 domain names if your company name is more than one word. For example, if your business is called "Red River", register redriver.com and red-river.com. Use the first one for verbal purposes, i.e., over the phone, and the latter hyphenated version on anything printed.

As you can see, separating the two words with a hyphen makes it easier to read and, hence, remember. The non-hyphenated version is better when you're vocalizing your web site, "You can find me on the web at red river dot com". No need to ball up the whole thing by mentioning the hyphen.