IM Remarkable – IM Remarkable Review

This series of posts is for the person asking “How do I start my own website?”.  To begin with:  Have you thought about your long term plans for your website?  Doing so will be a great advantage in determining the best possible domain name.  Careful consideration of your website’s domain name can pay off in dividends once your website is published online. Ultimately you are seeking to attract customers- the Holy Grail, and good marketing (which will help with Search Engine placement also) begins with your choice of domain name.

OK, so now you’ve found the domain name you want, but someone else owns it.  Would it still be possible to buy the domain name?  Possibly.  It’s possible, but there are some things to consider.  With some research and hard work you can get the domain name you want even if it is already spoken for.  But for now, lets look at some alternatives to getting that domain name you want:

Hyphenated Names One strategy to consider if the domain name you want is already taken would be to hyphenate it, as in turning ricksantiqueshop.com into ricks-antique-shop.com.  Is hyphenating the best way to go?  Maybe, maybe not.  If you want a domain name that is already taken by someone else and is already a well known, well traveled website, this might be a bad move, because users already familiar with the original domain name will just type the original, non-hyphenated version into their web browser, and end up not at your site but at your competitor’s site.  Not what you were after!  Also, if you do decide to take a hyphenated domain name, remember to keep it short!  The longer the domain name and the more dashes you put between words the harder it will be for the end user to remember, and therefore makes it more error prone, which could cost you customers who never make it to your website.  Definitely shorter is better.  Hyphenating a domain name might be a good strategy for you in the following scenario: Let’s say the domain name you want is taken, and the current owner is not willing to give it up.  After researching it you find that there is no website published under the domain name, or perhaps there is but it is poorly designed and gets very little traffic.  In a case like that hyphenating the domain name might make sense and in fact could be a wise strategy.  But be careful:  the last thing you want is to cause internet domain name confusion because you have decided on a domain name registration that is so close to a major competitor’s name that you end up losing business to them.

Longer or Shorter?  Domain names can be up to 67 characters long.  At 63 characters, thelongestdomainnameintheworldandthensome
andthensomemoreandmore.com claims to be the longest domain name in the world, and it may very well be.  Who would want to type it into a browser?  My website is www.StartYourWebsiteToday.com  and features a name that in a few words encapsulates the purpose of the site.  Good name selection can be helpful also with search engine ranking.  You will want to definitely keep the name as short and sweet as possible, but at the same time let the visitor know what to expect when he surfs to your website.  Shorter is better here.

Brand Name or Generic  The answer here is it depends.  Definitely if your business is known by a fairly well known brand name, then you would want to try and secure that as your domain name.  Budweiser.com is a site that is well known and gets a lot of traffic, even though there is nothing specifically in the domain name that says anything about beer.  But because Budweiser is known all over the world as a beer brand, people know what they are getting when they surf to the website.  If your brand name is well known, definitely try to obtain your brand name as a domain name.  But if your company is Nike or Coca Cola or Budweiser don’t discount the idea of buying the domain name shoes.com or soda.com or beer.com if they are available as well.  People often search the web using generic terms, more so even than brand names.  A person is more likely to search the internet with generic terms like shoes or footwear or sneakers than to search by a single brand name, even one as big as Nike.  So if possible cover all the bases.  You can have as many domain names as you want pointing to a single website, so the more generic terms you can acquire that directly describe your business, the better.   A generic name if your business is new or not yet well known can get great results, if you can find a good one.  To start your search for your own unique domain name, here is a link to a domain name search engine.  So in conclusion, the first step in “how to start a website” is in the wise choice of your domain name. 

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