When a new business is looking to make a splash online, they must get several things right. They need to ensure the products and/or services they are offering will help them stand out in the market. They also must ensure they are pricing these products or services at the right level, as they do not want to turn customers away, or let go of potential profits during the first few years. But another factor that is often ignored is the brand or domain name of a business - as it is more important than you would imagine.

The concept behind brandable domain names is relatively simple. When you are opening a new business, you are competing in a massive online marketplace. It is not the same as opening a small business in a tiny town, where you may only have limited competition. When you are opening an eCommerce site, whether it is based in the United States or another country, there are dozens of other sites within your niche that are also competing for the same customers. How will you stand out? Finding the right domain name can help a great deal, as it helps develop an online presence for the business.

With brandable domain names, companies will find it a lot easier to reach out to new customers, promote their brand on social media, and ensure they are gaining ground on the competition with regards to online search engine results rankings. But companies must also choose a domain name carefully. If you visit one of these websites where they offer brandable domain names for a certain price, you may find yourself gravitating towards the domain names that cost the most. And in some cases, the more expensive a domain name the more sought after it may be. But you should also look at the situation from your unique perspective.

For instance, if you see a brand name that is available for $15,000, and another one for $800, it is not necessarily the case that the $15,000 one makes more sense for you. In order to choose the right domain name, you must conduct some research. Consider your target market, assess the domain names, company logos and color schemes for your competitors, and try to figure out what types of names are working for startups in other sectors. If you do the research correctly, you should not have too many issues figuring out what domain name is going to work for you.

Here are a couple of examples, if you are a Realtor a good domain name might be ISOHomes.com, it is short, easy to remember and easy to tell customers how to find you or if you are looking to open an online pet store InstaWag.com is a very catchy name, who does not love a cute animal wagging their tail. Smart Choice Domains offers 100’s of different domain names at realistic pricing.

Now, you may be wondering, why should I even buy a brandable domain name? Why not create my own domain name and go from there? If you do have a great idea that you believe can catch on, there is no harm in going with what you have already crafted. But, if you are a little stumped for ideas, going on these sites can help you figure out what is going to work. These domain names are expensive for a reason - they work. Make sure you investigate how they could work for your business!

With over 50 million registered domain names, it’s tough to find a good one that’s still available. Unfortunately, the domain name industry is full of opportunistic “traders” who buy and sell domain names without any intention of even using it themselves. Because of this, the majority of the registered domain names don’t even have a website to go with it!

This can be quite frustrating as you seek out a domain name for yourself to build a website for. But at the end of the day in a first-come first-served world, we must try and find another way to find that great domain name.

There are several tools that can be very handy when it comes to looking for a domain name. I discuss these tools in another article. Here we will discuss what makes a good domain name.

To brand or not to brand?

Branding is a key element in traditional “offline” marketing. Having a unique, catchy name does wonders for any business. However, when it comes to an online presence, you might just be better off with a domain name that is rich in keywords.

Search engines primarily work on keywords as you may know. You enter a search term or “keywords” and the search engine produces results based on their formulas and the websites they believe to be the best fit for your search.

Now, there are many Search Engine Optimization techniques that can be used by anyone on any site. The same techniques could be applied to a lot of sites, so my question is what could possibly be the one thing that is unique and could separate one site from the other? Of course, domain names!

I prefer keywords in the domain names that I own because this is what could give me the edge over competitors. Of course, it’s not so important if your website is a personal one and you are not looking to make any money from it. But if you are selling something or wanting to make money off your website, I would strongly recommend using keywords in your domain names. Just to prove it, go to Google.com and search for "domain name". You will see in the results that any occurrence of the words “domain” or “name” is actually in bold. So, Google is definitely looking out for your search terms and highlighting them for you.

On the other hand, branding is still a strong concept online as well. If you find that catchy name (such as ....hmmm Google?) and market it well, then you could be well on your way to word-of-mouth fame in no time!

If your business name is available, register it. You can always register keyword rich domain names to draw the traffic and redirect them to your business name domain.

Hyphens or no hyphens?

Another common topic of discussion is whether to use hyphens in your domain names. I own mixtures of both hyphenated and non-hyphenated names. There is nothing wrong with hyphens. In fact, for search engines you are helping them by separating words that could be read differently. Here is one example: mikesmithstables.com

This domain could belong to a horse trainer “Mike Smith”, as a website for his racing stables, or it could also be read as “Mike Smith’s Tables”. So, there is definitely nothing wrong with hyphenation, as it would actually help to distinguish where the words end in the above example. The only small problem you will run into is word of mouth advertising where people will have to call out the hyphens. Try telling your friends about this domain p-e-t-s-h-o-p.com, it might say what your business is, but most people will leave out the hyphens. But believe me, you want all your traffic to come from search engines because it’s free and the volumes are enormous.

What about using abbreviations?

If your preferred name was something like flowerstoyou.com but it was taken, but you see flowers2you.com is available, should you take it? There are several common abbreviations or variations of certain words that are almost commonly accepted, particularly in cyberspace. Thanks also SMS messaging, we are now used to the use of “2″ instead of “to”, “4″ instead of “for” etc. Whether you choose to use such variations in your domain name is totally up 2 u (ok I was trying to be funny..).

Don’t forget however that word of mouth advertising will always require the person making the recommendation to remind people of the substitute.

Domain Resellers

Domain resellers can be a great resource for finding those premium domain names that have been purchased for resale, yes you might pay a little more than you wanted, but you will be getting the exact keyword rich domain you were looking for, and or the brand that you want to represent for your business. Believe me it could make all the difference in the world to be a success online. Smart Choice Domains offers some fantastic branding domains and keyword rich domains at realistic pricing.