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Naming Your Domain One of the first steps, when building any website, is carefully choosing the correct name. The name of your website, known as the "domain" or "URL", is an important marketing tool and requires careful consideration. Over 74 million domains have been sold worldwide with the instantly recognizable "dotcom" extension. In addition, millions of other domain names have been registered, using the name extensions .org, .net, .biz, and .us, as well as country specific endings. Thousands of domain names are registered, every day, as more companies seek to build an online presence and unlock the potential of the internet. For most businesses, the dotcom (.com) domain extension is highly recommended, immediately identifying you as a business. This extension is, by far, the most popular type and gives the website name a ring of authority and gravitas. We recommend using a dotcom (.com) extension on your business name, whenever possible, as it is an internationally recognized extension. However, if your business is primarily local to your community in a specific country (for example, Canada), and your keywords or business name is not available as a dotcom, you could register your website with the ".ca" extension (.ca = Canada). Type of Name There are two major ways that businesses use domain names to project the right image: 1) To reflect and project a brand identity Is the purpose of your website to:
Once you have established the purpose of your website, you can decide whether to use a keyword-based domain name or a brand-based domain name, which incorporates your company name. When to Use a Keyword-based Domain Name If you are a new business, using an appropriate keyword phrase can bring about higher rankings in search engines and directories. For example, if you wanted your website ranked highly in online searches, for the keyword term financial advisor Vancouver, you might register your website domain as www.FinancialAdvisorVancouver.com This type of name is also powerful when used in combination with traditional advertising methods, as it can be easily imprinted into people's memories. The top three search engines, Google, Yahoo, and MSN, all appear to give a higher ranking to websites containing relevant keywords in their domain name. If you want to create new business from prospective clients who are searching for a specific product or service on the Internet, use a keyword-based domain name. When you use a keyword-based domain name, you may not be easily found if your business name is already well known in your local area. There are, fortunately, some workable solutions to this problem. For example, you can register the website under your business name in the Google Business Directory and various local online directories. The other useful option is to include your normal business name in the page titles and amongst the page content of your website, making it much more visible to the search engines.
When to Use Your Company Name If you have a strong brand name, or a company name that is well known and recognized in your community, choose a domain name that utilizes this identity. If it is important that your clients can easily find you on the Internet through your established trading name, use the company name for your website's domain name. Unfortunately, there is always a possibility that the domain name for your company name is no longer available. In this case, you have to use creativity and lateral thinking to find the best and most fitting domain name for your site. As an example, the business name of one of our clients is, "McGuire Financial Services." The domain name had already been registered by a business of the same name in another city. Our next step was to find variations of this name and check if they were still available for registration. In this case, we registered McGuire Financial Services, Ltd. withe the domain name 'GoMcGuireFinancial.com.' If you were searching on the Internet to try to find McGuire Financial, you might type into Google: "McGuire Financial Services." You would then find several different businesses listed under those keywords. McGuire's website often appears in the top 10 search engine rankings for searches with the keywords "McGuire Financial Services". As you can see below, McGuire's two websites hold the top five Google rankings for more specific searches using the business name and location. The exact search term keywords were; 'McGuire Financial Vancouver.' If your business name is not available as a dotcom, try a few variations where you add the name of your local town, for example, 'McGuireFinancialVancouver.com.' Often people will add the city or town where your business resides, to try and narrow down the search, so your business location is often an important component for building a search engine optimized website. Registering a domain name costs only $10 per year. So you could try some other strategies. One approach is to register two different domain names: for example, "YourCompany.com " and "YourCompany.net. " This not only gives search engines more to see, it gives you the opportunity to use one domain name as your main website and use the other domain name to point to that web site. Brainstorm Possible Names • List as many words and phrases that you can think of that are related to your business. These can be used to select a powerful and focused keyword-based domain name. • Now, list as many words and phrases that you can think of, that are related to the content of your website, products and services. One useful tip to be aware of is that people typing search terms in Google often type in a specific question or problem. For example, a person may type in Google: How Much Insurance Do I Need? Or What is Critical Illness Insurance?) • Use Google to brainstorm possible keyword phrases for your domain name, noting how many results they generate. You should type the shortlist domain names you would like to own into Google, allowing you to find out if they are in use already. It is also useful to go to Catch8.com and use their domain checking service to try out various alternatives. Whilst you are there, you can easily purchase available domain names for only $9.99 per year. NOTE: When you purchase a website from FinancialAdvisorWebsiteDesign.com, we include one year of FREE domain registration and internet hosting service with Catch8.com. We'll even recommend a domain name for your business based on our search and register your domain name for you.We'll provide you with an account in your business name at Catch8.com so that you are able to change or add-on new services, or easily reserve additional domain names. 
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