What's
in a Name?
by
Peter Thorpe
According
to William Shakespeare, a rose by any other name would still
smell as sweet…
This
might be true in the horticultural world but when it comes to
cyberspace, a bad domain name can really stink!
This
explains why names like wallstreet.com sold for $US1 million
and the name business.com sold for around $US7.5 mil. Recently
it was reported in the German press that the domain name sex.com
was for sale for $US85 million. It was later revealed this was
thought to be a publicity stunt to attract attention to the
site. However, it's indicative of the enormous value people
place on a catchy domain name.
So,
why would companies pay such unbelievably high prices just for
a domain name, which cost under $100 originally?
The
answer is simple: There is absolutely no point in being on the
Internet unless people can find you. Why spend thousands or
even hundreds of thousands of dollars building a website if
nobody comes?
Other
major reasons
Having
a simple, easy to remember domain name is paramount. A short,
snappy name that says, who you are and what you do, makes good
marketing sense. But there's a whole lot more to it than that.
Having the right domain name can save you millions of dollars
in advertising and promotion.
How?
Chances
are most of the visitors to your website will have found your
details in what is known as a search engine. Depending upon
the industry you're in and how well you promote your website
off-line, typically, as much as 80 to 95 per cent of your website
traffic will come to you from the results of a search engine.
This
is where positioning becomes so critical. If your website doesn't
come up in the first 30 to 40 results on any given search, chances
are you won't get much traffic to your site at all. But with
over a billion web pages out there and millions more being added
every month, getting a good position in the search engines is
getting harder and harder by the minute.
Here's
where your domain name becomes so important. Many of the search
engines use the relevance of the words in your domain name as
one of the important criteria. Therefore, it makes good sense
to have a domain name that uses the key words somebody might
type into a search engine to find your product or service.
For
instance, if you go to the search engine Alta Vista and type
the word, 'travel' you will get a list of over 16 million pages.
That's right, I said 16 million! Imagine your chances of being
discovered if your name comes up number 15,999,999! Not good.
If
you look closely, you will notice that at the top of the list
many of the website addresses contain the word, 'travel' in
their name. It's no guarantee of success but it certainly helps.
Search
engine optimisation
So,
what does it take to get a prominent position with the search
engines? (Lots of money if you want to pay a specialist to do
it for you). Firstly, you need to understand how search engines
work.
Most
search engines use a complicated set of criteria to decide where
to place you on the list. This varies from engine to engine
but it generally includes things like, looking at what is known
as your 'meta tag keywords and site description.' These are
key words and phrases that are not seen by the normal visitor,
they should be put there by your web designer.
They
also look at the relevance of words and phrases contained in
the text of your pages and even things like links to your site.
Yes, many major search engines now use the number of websites
linked to your website as a criteria for positioning you. The
theory being, the more links people have to your site, the more
popular and relevant your site is.
A
double edged sword
Of
course, bear in mind, links are always a double edged sword.
ie It will bring more people to your site but it will also encourage
more people to leave your site and go to somebody else's. Nevertheless,
if you don't have any or many links to your site, you might
want to start working on that by seeking reciprocal links (you
link to their site and they link to yours).
How
do you do that?
Usually
by just asking. Seek out websites that have a common interest
or synergy with your own site and contact them to see if they
are interested in having a reciprocal link. Chances are people
already have links to your site that you are not even aware
of.
How
do you find out who has a link on their site to your site? Easy.
Go
to www.altavista.com and type: link:yourdomainname.com.au
They
will do a quick search and turn up the names of all the people
who have links to your site (those that are listed with Alta
Vista, anyway). Give it a try. You may get some surprises (pleasant
or unpleasant).
By
the way, Pizza Hut have a great system for using links to their
advantage. They give a FREE pizza to anyone who links to their
site! If you want to see how well this works, go to Alta Vista
and type "PIZZA" as your search. Guess who comes up number one
every time!
So,
back to your domain name.
Apart
from the search engine aspect, think about it. If I was looking
for a travel site, www.travel.com.au (or .com) immediately springs
into my mind. How about you? This type of instant recognition
and recall is worth big dollars in today's competitive Internet
marketplace.
So,
what's in a name?
Well,
if you want to come up smelling like roses on the internet -
absolutely everything!
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