I get people asking me all the time…

“How Do I Choose The Right Domain Name”

It is all too often that people go about this the wrong way.

Here is one of the most common mistakes I see people make when buying a domain name.

For illustrative purposes, I am going to make up fictional company names and domain names to make my point.

Joe Smith has an Moving Company in Tampa Bay Florida.

His company name is  JS Transport.  So what does Joe go out and do?  He goes and buys the domain name jstransport.com.  Right?

No, terribly wrong.

Here is why.

No one, and I mean no one, except Joe, his family, and his friends that know about his website will go to google and search the term  js transport.

So people think, yes, that may be true, but I want my company name to be evident, so people get to know my name.

Thats great, if you have already branded yourself as a household name.

Take Bekins moving for instance.

This company has been around for over 100 years.  People WILL go to google and search the term bekins.  It is not going to happen for js transport.

So what domain should Joe buy?

Well, what I advise as SEO strategist, and an avid internet marketer with over 65 domains myself (many of them first page ranked) is to buy something relative to what his market is looking for.

There is no point going for moving company, because if the moving company only services Tampa Bay, then even if you were lucky enough to get ranked high for moving company, it would be useless for people in Seattle, Washington to find that in a search.

This is where Geo-Targeting comes in.

If you have this local business, the first domain name I would search for would be TampaBayMoving.com  or TampaBayMovers.com  If these were not available, then I would use a keyword tool like Market Samurai to dig deeper.

Now what most customers say to this is, that…..

Ok, that sounds good, but I don’t want a domain that does not reflect my company name.

Wrong again.

You buy the domain name to get the built in traffic you will get from properly optimizing the site.

You BRAND your company name on the actual website itself.

There is nothing wrong with buying the domain name TampaBayMovers.com when you put on your home page, a Title that Says… JS Transport – Tampa Bays Best Movers.

The goal here is brand your company, but before you can do that, people have to come to your website.  If your website is well done, and optimized, many people will come, and over time your brand “JS Transport” will become synomonous with Tampa Bay movers.

Get it?

Get the traffic, Brand your company.  Do not try to brand your company within your domain name first.

Now, there are exceptions to this rule.

Google is not something anyone would have searched before they heard of them.

There are many companies that make a name that does not exist, and have such deep pockets, and advanced marketing techniques, like automated backlinking, social strategies, incredible SEO Staff, and much more, that within a short period of time, everyone on the planet knows who Google is.

Facebook is another example.

There is no one in their right mind that would have ever keyed in the term facebook into google before facebook was the phenomenon that it is.

So when do you exercise the geo targeting?

When you have a small company, that has virtually no branding, and you do not have deep pockets, incredible SEO Staff, no affiliates, then geo-targeting is for you.

Now if your business is “unbranded” but it is not geo specific (in other words, you sell internationally), then you do not geo target, you keyword target.

Again if you own a clothing store, named Johns Clothing Emporium, do not go out and buy the domain name johnsclothingemporium.com.

Do the keyword research and find something available that does not have John, or emporium in it.  People do not search these words.

They would search levi’s 501 jeans, or many other articles of clothing.  They may even search mens clothing, but it would be ridiculous at this point to even think of getting a domain like that.

The goal here is to put in the domain name the highest searched keywords that best fit your business and not necessarily, and in most cases not altogether your company name.

I hope you have found this article informative, and you can ask me to help you with your keyword research when you are ready to buy a domain name by filling in my contact form here