Once you have carefully applied the finishing touches to what you reckon is an excellent website, it’s easy to buy into the mantra that “if you build it, they will come”. However, if you aren’t careful what domain name you choose, even people who attempt to visit your site could fall at the first hurdle.
Even something as small as a single letter or hyphen looking out of place in your domain name could foil your budding customers’ efforts to type it correctly in that URL field. Here’s why you should treat creating a domain name like you’re filling in a tax return: in short, like accuracy is everything…
Your brand’s reputation could count on it
As a general rule, the simpler and more to-the-point a domain name is, the easier it will be for customers to remember or, in a pinch, guess it. So, a car company could benefit from owning cars.com, a toy retailer toys.com and a bedding supplier beds.com. (These URLs are all, unsurprisingly, taken.)
So, if your first choice of domain name is already registered, you should probably be wary of adding a hyphen or extra word somewhere in the address in your bid to get one that is available. Someone who tries but fails to recall it could too easily end up entering one of your rivals’ URLs instead.
You can more easily strengthen your site’s SEO
Really, brand reputation goes hand in hand with SEO – because, if you foster a powerful brand, you can more successfully attract people to your site on the strength of that brand alone. Google will then take notice of your increased visitor traffic and point even more people towards your site.
Having a domain name that accurately reflects what your company offers will further ease your efforts to draw the eye of many of these people when they search for companies like yours. An address like plumbers-in-newcastle.com, for example, is likely to rank higher in relevant searches.
You can draw direct traffic more easily, too
Naturally, memorable URLs tend to be relatively pricy – hence why they are often dubbed “premium” domain names. However, they can be more than worth the necessary financial outlay – as, once someone has memorised a URL, they could get into the habit of typing it directly into the URL bar.
Consequently, they will completely bypass the search engines, where your competitors could otherwise have been lying in wait, hoping to nab their custom. Result!
It will be an investment in your company’s future
Like buying gold, securing a premium domain name can give you something that preserves and even increases its high value over time, making that name something of an insurance policy for your business. If you fail to get good branding out of the domain, you could just sell it to cut your losses.
For this reason, we are happy to work hard to find you a domain name from a popular extension like .com, .co.uk or .net – and register that address so that it’s all yours.
