Bookmark article
Follow article
Email to a friend
Share articleIf you are a small business focus on one domain name and market the heck out of it. When it comes time to print business cards, marketing materials, and other promo materials which domain do you use? Dont run into this, stick with one name. Also, in my experience and research, multiple domains that point to the same site are now penalized in search. If you are going to juggle multiple domains make sure you can develop each site with the care and time you should with any website worthy of a good ranking. Anyways, if you all have any questions about building your website and marketing it just ask me.
search marketing online advertising business networking internet / web site development & promotion
Old Greenwich, Connecticut
Old Greenwich, Connecticut
Very helpful
out of 10
2 votes
The difference between a brand name and a domain name
Want your business to be found? If / When your business is found, what message do you want to get across to the potential customer -- that might motivate them to take the leap to become an actual cutomer?
Written Apr 17, 2008, read 269 times since then.
This is less of a "let me tell you" article than an article where I would appreciate it very much if you could tell me how / what you feel.
Here's a very simple, straightforward example: microsoft is a brand name, and microsoft.com is a domain name. MSN.com and Live.com are also domain names. When searching for "ebay", people expect to find a domain named "ebay" (e.g. ebay.com or ebay.de etc.). Therefore any/all search engines will first / foremost match domain names -- it's a rather "common sense" approach, and the laws of supply & demand will lead to high-quality information moving towards the keyword domain names related to the type of information that users need. So it makes perfect sense that weather.com , weather.net , weather.org , etc. to all have information about weather (in the long run, the different "top level domains" [TLDs] will mean different types of information -- and/but it's still too early to nail down what people generally consider each TLD "actually" refers to [for example: "net" might refer to a computer network, or it might refer to a social network).
The important thing for a small business to realize is that naming the business is probably quite different from that business being found. If you own a shoe store, then being listed on shoes.com or shoes.net or shoes.org will be very valuable -- indeed, it is far more valuable than simply perhaps being listed on a general search engine. Nevertheless: In either case, the good domain name for a small business will be the name that actually motivates the potential customer to click -- this is what I would refer to as a good brand name.
Note, also, that many businesses have several brand names -- for example: Google uses the brand names "Google", "Youtube", "Gmail", "Adwords" as well as many others. It is actually ironic that Google maintains that people do not "search" for information by typing in the domain name -- because Google has each of these brands registered as domain names (as well as many other domains, too). Google quite often applies somewhat of a "double standard" this way, either allowing different "rules" to apply to it's own online properties -- and in many cases it even outright does self-promotion (rather than returning "plain" algorithmic results).
The smart business owner will think through the "problem" of "being found" by customers in 2 steps:
1. When a potential customer should find my business, what will they type into a computer? (e.g. "shoes" or "sneakers")
2. When the potential cutomer sees a list of responses, what might motivate them to click? (e.g. "sweet-feet" or "fast-track" [or maybe "fastrack"?])
You may actually find that registering several domains -- one for each of the various products / services you offer (and/or perhaps even one for each type of customer you wish to reach) -- may be the most efficient (both effective and cheap) approach to acquiring new cutomers.
What do you think?
ps: note that many names are protected / registered trademarks (this article does not cover anything related to tradmark law -- if you are thinking of finding a "doing business as" name that could be trademarked, I highly recommend having the name researched first -- in order to prevent any "legal hassle" from registering such a domain name)
Learn more about the author, Norbert Mayer-Wittmann.
Comment on this article
-
Posted by Robert J Salazar Jr, Littleton, Colorado | Apr 17, 2008 -
Posted by Kare Anderson, Sausalito, California | Apr 17, 2008Thank you Norbert:
I especially like your two steps.
I agree with Robert (above).
Have a vivid, short and easy-to-remember name that reflects your product, THEN make that name visible in as many helpful ways, times and places that matter to your kind of customer. Be easy to remember, easy to work with, easy to find.
I'm going to look up your info to find the name of your business.
-
Posted by Norbert Mayer-Wittmann, Old Greenwich, Connecticut | Apr 17, 2008Thanks Robert, that's a very good point -- I don't give out many business cards anymore, so I had completely forgotten about that (more on that below).
When you say "penalized in search", do you mean penalized in Google SERPs? AFAIK, there is little chance of coming out on top of a Google SERP without investing large sums of money. Of course Gmail.COM (which redirects to Google.COM) is an exception (probably because it belongs to Google [and this is an example of the "double standards" I mentioned above]). As has become apparent to most people tracking the online media business, Google has lost alot of the share of time spent on the Internet, because:
the SERPs are flooded with spam and so it is becoming useless for finding information (except for those who are knowledgable enough at information retrieval to use sophisticated methods in order to get passable results).
people are orienting their information-seeking more and more towards "trusted" friends -- i.e. drawing more and more on the recommendations of friends in communities (like here at biznik)
For people who still give out business cards, I do agree to stick with one domain -- and that central domain can then list domains for all of the products & services you offer.
-
Posted by Norbert Mayer-Wittmann, Old Greenwich, Connecticut | Apr 17, 2008
"I'm going to look up your info to find the name of your business."
Mayer-Wittmann Joint Ventures is easy to reach! :D
Note that we will not let undeveloped websites be indexed by Google.
-
Posted by Ron Pierce, High Point, North Carolina | May 03, 2008Norbert,
I agree very much with your article. When I'm working with clients on Internet Marketing, I remind them that this is really nothing more than an "extension" of their existing marketing efforts. You're not "going crazy" or "rocking the marketing-world boat." You are simply extending what you are doing to reach a larger audience on the Internet.
I also advise them that multiple domain names can be helpful, but that they need to choose ONE that is going to receive the majority of their focus and hopefully it's not only catchy and easy for the customer to remember, but it also contains keywords related to the product or service they are selling.
We've got one client who after doing keyword research on the best terms / phrases to promote their site actually had the right phrase as part of their name for the business AND their marketing URL. They didn't plan on it, but when they found out, they were elated.
I tell customers, BRAND yourself with one name, and then let the additional URLs be for the search engines alone knowing that we are going to target certain pages within the site with those additional URLs.
Simply put, let the customer have what the customer needs and let the search engines have what they need.
Everyone wins!
Article tags
- domain
- domains
- brand
- brands
- branding
- business
- name
- names
- domain name
- domain names
- brand name
- brand names
- business name
- business names
- company name
