Advantages of a Domain Name

The Advantages of Having a Generic Domain Name for Your Business

The first thing most people do when they need to get a domain name to set up a new website for their business is to look and see if they can get their exact business name. So

if they own a business called Vegetables R Us they’ll try for VegetablesRUs.com.

But is this the smartest way to go? It’s not if they want to make the most of getting plenty of search engine traffic – and let’s face it, most of us would like to get as much traffic from the likes of Google, Yahoo and others as we can.

So what’s the solution? Simple – opt for a generic domain name instead of your business name. A generic domain name is one that describes your business rather than naming it. One of the best examples in the UK is the DIY store B&Q. Now if they had bought their own business name as a domain, they’d have something like BandQ.com. It’s a bit clumsy but it also doesn’t describe what they do. But they didn’t do that. Instead they chose DIY.com, which must surely now be worth a fortune. B&Q gets five million searches a month in Google, so it is hardly unsuccessful. But DIY gets more than ELEVEN million searches a month – more than double their actual business name.

What does this mean for you if you’re looking to buy a domain name? It simply means that a generic domain name will provide you with more opportunities to pick up more traffic from the search engines. The chances are your business is not as well known as B&Q, so it is unlikely that you will have the power of a well known business name or brand behind you. This means you have to employ all the techniques you can to get as much traffic to your site as you can – and choosing a generic domain name can help enormously in this respect.

So what are some of the main advantages you’ll benefit from if you get a generic domain name for your website?

You can seize the opportunity to grab people who haven’t made a brand decision yet

Some people go online with the specific desire to find a brand named company to buy from. But a lot of people aren’t in this position and they are willing to look around to see which company might suit them the best.

If you create custom mouse mats for computers and you call your company – and website – Mousetastic, you’ll only get traffic for that domain if people have heard of you. It will take a very long time to generate traffic through good and consistent SEO friendly content on your pages.

But if you set up a domain such as CustomMouseMats.com or something similar, you can start getting traffic very quickly. Anyone who is searching for custom mouse mats is very likely to come across your website, and if they like what they see they will consider coming to you to make a purchase.

It will be easier to rank more highly for the phrase you choose

This has been borne out by the above example. Choosing a generic name immediately improves your chances of ranking more highly for that term. It could be anything relevant to your business – soft toys, kitchen utensils, garden fences or anything else. The truth is that if someone types in kitchen utensils and you happen to own a website which has that exact phrase in the domain name, the search engines are going to recognise that. And they’re going to rank you more highly as a result.

You can achieve more on a much lower advertising budget

Trying to make a brand a household name is a hugely expensive task, and one that only the big name companies can afford to take on. If you are going to win a lot of business online and grow your own business into a successful one, you have to do it on a smaller budget.

The good news is that if you opt for a generic domain name over a brand name you stand a much bigger chance of doing this. Once your domain name starts to age and develop with good content on it, you will see it start to rise higher in the search engine rankings. It is much easier to achieve better results with a generic name than with a brand name that few people will be familiar with.

Generic domains can generate a lot more traffic than branded domains

We’ve already seen that an unknown brand name domain can struggle to achieve good rankings in the search engines. If a site is badly ranked, it will never gain a lot of traffic. This is because people rarely go beyond the first one or two pages of the search results.

But if you have a generic domain name it is easier to get it higher in the results, precisely because of the term you have chosen. No one quite knows how the search engine algorithms work. But it is fair to say that if someone searches for green vegetables for cooking and you happen to own a site called GreenVegetablesforCooking.com, your site stands a very good chance of ranking highly in those results. This is because it is relevant to the search that has been made. Providing your pages contain relevant content as well (which they should) they will do well in the search results and bring you more traffic.

Clearly it is worth choosing a good generic domain name to help strengthen your online business offering. This is true even if you already have a brand name website you are using. You can buy a generic name and link that domain to your existing website to benefit from even more traffic. Generic domains are always capable of achieving good results for your business, so make sure you buy one that is going to work for you from today onwards.