Domain Selection Is An Important Work From Home Decision

If you are planning to work from home by starting up a home business, you will undoubtedly need a website. So what should you choose as your domain name?

In the your Internet age, there has been a good amount of debate on which factors are the most important when determining what domain to purchase. However, the consensus is that choosing a domain name should be deeply tied to the business plan and the vision of your home business. A domain can be chosen for it's advantages in search engine placement, your company’s brand, or as a description of a general term. You will need to take into account a domain name's length, pronunciation, memorability, and if the name is taken in other similar forms or extensions. For example, if one registers yourdomain.net, but the yourdomain.com is taken and developed, creating a brand for yourdomain.net would be very dangerous, and might end up being confused for its .com counterpart.

With that being said, let us look at the three major rationales used when choosing a domain.

1) Domains For Search Engine Placement

The purpose of this sort of domain, is to rank high in the search engines. Such domains contain the keywords being searched for. Search engine domains are very rarely brandable, and are primarily utilized to redirect traffic to a main website. A company who sells blue widgets would benefit from acquiring blue-widgets.com and bluewidgets.com, firstly, because it is natural that people will remember such address, but most importantly, such a domain name has a high probability of ranking at, or very near to, the top of a search for ‘blue widgets’. 

2) Domains For Branding

When coming from the offline business into the work from home Internet world, the obvious choice for brand domains is the offline brand name plus a: (dot) com and/or (dot) country extension. Country extensions are used in countries were there is more popularity in their country extension than on the .com. In the case that no previous brand existed before moving online, one most be very creative when composing their brandable name. Keep in mind that there are millions of domain names registered around the world, and that the Internet is not region specific. Consequently, one often finds that the desired domain is taken. There is a consensus among most Internet domain experts that the shorter the domain, the better. A domain which is approximately five letters long is highly desirable for a brand. However, the domain must sound right as well. For instance, ybxxtz.com would be undesirable, because it cannot be easily said to or remembered by the general public.

3) General Term Domains

In the height of the (dot) com boom, general term domains were the most popular choice. When the (dot) com bubble burst, many companies failed despite the fact that they had the generic word for their market. Companies like TheKnot.com, refused to purchase Weddings.com, because they were well aware of the fact that they needed to focus on brand. Although this strategy worked for TheKnot.com, generic words have a value of their own which cannot be ignored. Similar to "Search Engine Placement Domains", which attract a large number of visitors through search engine referrals, so do generic word domains. For this reason, generic word names are still very much desired, and their value continues to rise. What should be taken from the (dot) com collapse, is that generic domains are not everything in a (dot) com business. Rather, they are a valuable component in an array of variables which make an Internet business a success.

All in all, before you make the move to work from home with you home business, you should sit down and compose a list of potential domain names. Think of the three rationales mentioned above, and determine which is most important and beneficial to your home business.