This is an excellent question. Let’s say I am starting a brand new online venture. I have decided on my company name and it is already confirmed as registered. For example I have named my company Joe’s Trading Inc and I sell cheap widgets. I now need to get my domain name. So what do I choose?

Firstly let’s begin with the actual company name. My company is called Joe’s Trading Ltd so it makes sense that I should register joestradingltd.com or joestrading.com or joestrading.co.uk right?

Nope…this is not the best choice…

When I register a domain name there are some major factors which I need to take onboard. Firstly, what is the purpose of the domain? Is it’s purpose corporate branding or is it to drive traffic to my website?

Well if I am running ‘IBM’ or ‘MacDonalds’, then for sure branding is a clear consideration but ‘Joes Trading Ltd’ simply wants to make sales of blue widgets online and hopefully many, many sales. My real priority is to generate as much targeted website traffic to my site to convert to sales

My business is selling widgets. This is my target market and my unique selling position is that they are really cheap. But what has this got to do with my domain name?

Well…Everything!

The domain name itself is a huge factor which search engines consider when they automatically decide the importance of sites they decide to index in their search results. on search engines. And today, search engines provide 90% of web site traffic. In fact in recent studies, it has been discovered that the domain name counts for 30% of all factors which the search engine decides is important for ranking a website.

The domain really is THAT important!

So what makes a higher ranking domain name? Well, firstly shorter the better. There is a clear correlation between the length of the domain and its ranking is the search results. Secondly, the domain must include the keyword for which you wish to rank high. In this case Joes Trading Ltd sells Widgets so the domain should contain widgets. The widgets are cheap so the domain could be cheapwidgets.com. This domain is going get higher ranking in the search engines for the search term ‘widgets or ‘cheap widgets’ than ‘joestrading.com’ could ever hope to achieve

Higher ranking means more traffic which in turn means more sales & profits. So when it comes to purchasing your domain make search engine ranking your number one priority.

Colin Hartness is the Marketing Director of Web-At-Work Ltd T/A Cheap Domain Names UK offering cheap UK domain registration with full DNS management and low price hosting packages inclusive of cutting-edge online site building software. For more details visit: http://www.cheapdomainnames.uk.com