A Domain Name - What is Behind It?
By Johari Abdul Rahman

Many articles had been written on the characteristics of a good domain name. I include some of points here:

1. The domain name is the name of the website itself. 2. Easy to spell, relatively short and easy to be remembered. 3. Contains the keywords - The words chosen to clearly describe what you or your business does. This will help the search engine to relate to the searches made by the customers. 4. Alphabetically strategic - Most directories are sorted according to the alphabetical order. If your web's name started with 'z' likely it will be among the last in the list. 5. Intuitive to the customers - the name selected should indicate who you are and the type of business you are in. If you are selling a romance books, name such as pagesofromance.com give some indication of the business. 6. Others, such as the issue of local or global name, dot com or biz etc

Having a good name is important for two basic reasons. First, it is for human consumption, as the way we think, we always do it using associations. If we see a web site with a picture of a football, our mind will associate it to the favorite football club or football players. This is important, as we want the name of our web site to have the natural association to the products or services that we are marketing.

It is also important for us to be aware of the cultural implication of the chosen name. This is because the same word will have different significant to different groups of people. The word 'red' will indicate prosperity to a Chinese, and can mean bravery to another group, and at worst can be related to blood or death.

Second reason is for the search engines. The customers will be searching for the product using the search engine. It will be great, if it point to your web site straight away. You can use the help from the search engine tools to identify if the selected name has a high search hits or not.

Looking at significant of the domain name, both to the customers and the search engines, it is a good idea to balance and optimize it. If you intend to rely heavily of SEO, it is more important to have the name corresponding to the requirements of the search engine. However I will tend to put preference to the human needs, as the SEO can be done by other methods.

Thank You very much. Johari Rahman.

Spent more than 10 years working in an International Airline in the field of Training and Development. Responsible for the Training Needs Analysis an providing the Training Solutions
Maintain a learning blog: http://www.pramugari.biz/

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