It used to be that finding a good name for your business was a fairly simple matter— Does it fit your business? Do you like the name? Is it different from the competition? Easy to remember?

Then websites, internet marketing and search engines came along and things get a bit more complicated. Meet the URL. Some basics to

keep in mind—
1. Shorter is Better, three words maximum.
2. Avoid odd spellings and hard to pronounce words.
3. While you CAN use hyphens and underscores, a solid “word” is better.
4. Avoid multiple syllable words unless it’s just one word.
5. While .com is the first choice, now the other options have become more accepted and are ok to choose.
6. Just say “no” to buying multiple domains to squat on the name. Unless you are a major corporation with major brand control issues it’s not really worth it.

If you can’t get your exact business name, choosing a name with keywords that are likely to be used when searching for your services or products is a good choice.

A technique that few businesses employ it to use subdirectories to get more mileage out of your domain name. This won’t mean much to the “non techie,” but here is an example. Say your domain name is cutekittens.com. If a subdirectory were created and named “get” you could have “get.cutekittens.com.” Food for thought—I suspect that as it gets harder to come up with domain names you will see more use of this strategy.

To your business success!