Increase Web Traffic with A Great Domain Name

It does not matter why you have created your new website. Your biggest goal at the outset is getting people to actually come to it. Maybe you are trying to rebrand yourself in a bum economy with a CV-style site. Or perhaps you are starting up an e-commerce division of your business. Or maybe you are launching a personal blog on a hobby that you have left unattended over the years. For all website owners, the goal is the same: increase traffic!



Before you even open up the site for business, you have your first opportunity to get your webpage off to a running start. You have to choose and register a domain name. This is the web address where people will find your site, also known as its URL. If you do not get the domain name right, you are essentially shooting yourself in the foot when it comes to making your website a popular Internet destination. If it is too long, too complicate, or too close in spelling to another popular site, you are basically doomed. So follow these tips, and get it right the first time.



1. Less is more.



Think really quickly about some of the most popular domain names of all time: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Twitter, Ebay. What do they all have in common? First of all, they are all two syllables or less in length. They role off the tongue easily; a native English speaker would never have trouble understanding when someone says the words "face" and "book". They are also all two words or less.



2. Avoid tricky spellings



Another thing that the abovementioned popular domain names all have in common is that they are all easy to spell. You do not want to lose any potential customers, clients, or blog readers just because they never mastered the tricky and irrational spelling system that is the English language. So avoid confusing words or spellings at all costs. Take this example. Before Google rose to Internet supremacy, not many people had heard the word "googol", a math term meaning the number one followed by 100 zeros that is the basis of the search engine behemoth’s name. Obviously the techie nerds who founded the company realized that naming their website Googol might confuse Internet patrons, so they changed it for simplification to more phonetic English. So consider this lesson when choosing your website’s URL. If you have a tricky to spell last name, for example, maybe leave it out of the domain name.



3. Always choose ".com"



There are dozens of different ways to end a website’s address, from ".org" to ".biz" to ".info". But most Internet users assume that any website that they hear about will end in ".com", and so by choosing a different suffix, you might be setting them off on the wrong trail. Of course there are websites that have found success using other endings, such as Craigslist.org and Wikipedia.org, but these are the exception rather than the rule. Plus, they have also both bought the .com versions of their websites (Craigslist.com and Wikipedia.com) so that anyone who goes to them will be redirected to the real sites.



To register your website today, head to networksolutions.com. Wordpress hosting is a great way to save a spot on the Internet for your personal site!