A good domain name can be the quickest way to get placement in search results. When people who have never heard of you search in Google for the type of product or service you sell, you want your domain name to help you show up high in the results. It's common for businesses to use their business name as their domain name. There's nothing wrong with that. But if your business name doesn't match the searches people make, you probably need an additional domain name.
Let's say you're building a travel site which offers readers your personal take on unique tourist destinations in British Columbia. You might have named your business "Best Place BC" and purchased the domain name bestplacebc.com. Sounds good, right? But if you go to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and type in the phrase "best place bc," you will find that almost no one is searching for that phrase. Now enter the phrase "bc travel" and you'll see that 22,000 people a month are making that search. It's time to turn this phrase into a domain name.
If you go to godaddy.com and check to see if Bctravel.com is taken, you will see that someone else owns it. Don't give up! Since your product is a personalized guide for touring BC, you can lengthen the phrase into something like bc travel gems and discover that bctravelgems.com is available. BC Travel Gems is a great match for what you're offering! At this point, since your business is new, you could change your business name to BC Travel Gems. NOW you have a domain name identical to your business, your business name totally describes your niche, AND 22,000 people a month are searching for it in Google!
This is a true story, actually. As of the writing of this post, bctravelgems.com is brand new and has great chances for climbing the ranks of Google search results. Please visit BC Travel Gems and see what I mean. It's a beauty, and the owner, Ginger John Levin is living her dream of exploring (and writing about) British Columbia. She will soon be growing the site and monetizing it with ads.
So think about an umbrella phrase for your business. Would it be pecos handyman? Is pecoshandyman.com available? Buy it!
"But I already have a domain name!", you say. "It's www.joecanfixit.com".
That's fine. Keep that domain but buy pecoshandyman.com also, and use it as the main domain for you site. Then point the old domain to your site using a 301 redirect. Your webmaster should know how. (This technical step is important to avoid being penalized for duplicate content it to your site). Also use the phrase "pecos handyman" in your site. See this short tutorial to learn where your keyword phrases should live on your site.
Warm wishes for happy web marketing!
