CHOOSING A WEBSITE ADDRESS
There’s a lot of good information out there where people give some pretty good advice about how you should strategically name your website so that it will be easy for people to find you on the web. Having said that you really should give some thought as to what to name your website because yes it could have an impact on whether or not someone can find you. However; if your product and or service are good then I am a firm believer that people will find your website no matter what you name it.
Things to consider when choosing a website name
Look at similar websites When trying to choose a website name; you might want search the web for websites that have goods and/or services that are similar to yours. Which websites are ranking high in your search? For example if you design and or sale children’s clothes; do a search for Children’s Cloths, what comes up? Do the websites have the name of their business in the title such as “Cute kid’s clothes”; or do they use their name in the address such as “Suzie Q’s Kids designs”? As an experiment write out several of the search names or phrases that you would think people would use when trying to find your site; then type them in a search engine. What websites ranks highest? What you discover may or may not make a big difference in what you choose to name your site but check it out anyway. Here are a few things that search engines like Google takes into consideration for ranking a site high such as:
- AGE: The age of the site; the longer the site has been online the better
- GREAT CONTENT; nothing beats having good information on your site. Put the type of information on your site that people need and are looking for.
- BACK LINKS; this is when another website links to your website.
There are of course more things that can rank you high in the search engines but that is for another session. 
Another thing to consider is the length of your website address This might sound a little crazy coming from me because for this particular website address can be considered somewhat lengthy; WOHWbuisinesspodcast.com. I shortened the name as much as I could by using the acronym WOHW with business podcast to follow. By putting business podcast in the title I am hoping that it will help with SEO (Search Engineer Optimization) when people Google the terms “Start up Business’ business podcast” etc. Is there a possibility that there are two names that sound alike but are spelled different? In my case the WOHO is a play on the word WOW. So I also purchased the domain name of wowfactorbusinesspodcast; just in case somebody used WOW instead of WOHW. If they use WOW they will be re-directed to the correct website address.
If you have a similar sounding name or if you decided to have new name then you can have your old address re-directed to your new website address. Consider an even shorter address name Shorter addresses are really nice when you only have a limited amount of character space (such as the case for Twitter) to post information.
The main reason that I choose this short URL is for limited space on sites like twitter but shortened domain names are also a lot easier to remember and pass on to share with other people. Here’s another example; this involves a man named Dan. Dan has a website design and an online marketing and consulting business and he’s considering the website name of www.danswebsiteandonlinemarketingconsultingbusiness.com this may be a bit lengthy so he might want to purchase a shorter name like www.danswebconsulting.info or something similar but shorter.
One last thing about shorter URL’s there are several url shortening services out there such as Bitly and pretty link is a WP plugin these are some of the most popular ones. These types of services serve very well for link softening and Bitly even allows for some pretty nice stats. Let’s say you email a bitly link to several people. Bitly can give you stats as to who clicked the link. There are differences when it comes to using link softeners as opposed to creating and registering a shorter domain name. If you want to avoid taking the extra steps to shortening your website name by using tools like Bitly then it might just b wroth your wild to go for it and get a shorter domain name from the start.
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QUIZ TIME
In keeping with the children’s clothing example; here is a bit of clothing trivia!
THIS IS NOT A QUIZ BUT A TRIVIA QUESTION
In keeping with the example of Susie Q the clothing designer…. I thought I would give you this trivia question. Who was the inventor of the popular jeans that was first created using duck cloth? A. Jacob W. Davis B. Levi Strauss C. Both
If you guessed C…… you are correct!
In 1853 Levi Strauss went to San Francisco to open a dry goods business. Because of the Gold Rush in the late 1940’s Levi wanted to sell tent covers for wagons to all of the gold miners and laborers. Levi worked with a tailor named Jacob W. Davis who made tents and horse blankets. The fabric that Davis used was heavy duty cotton duck cloth and heavy cotton denim which he bought from Levi Strauss & Co. In 1870; one of Davis customers asked if he could make her husband who was a woodcutter some durable pants. Davis used the heavy duck cloth and reinforced the seams and pockets with copper rivets. The pants quickly because very sought after by other laborers who needed durable pants. Davis approached Levi Strauss who was the supplier of the fabric and asked for his financial backing to patent the pants. Strauss agreed and on May 20, 1873 US Patent 139,121 for “Improvements in fastening pocket openings” was issued in the name of Jacob W. Davis and Levi Strauss & Company.
