Choosing Your Site’s Domain Name


If you were to read all the content residing on different websites about how to choose a domain name for your web site, you’d finish about the time you reached my age. Which is pretty old.

While it’s way past dumb starting this missive out by indirectly saying there’s no need for more verbiage on the subject being addressed, I pride myself for rarely being accused of doing the ‘smart’ thing.

Occasionally I’m credited with doing the ‘right’ thing, but that’s possibility another story…

So, and against my better judgment, and despite the real possibility of you clicking away because I’ve already suggested you ignore more information about choosing your site’s domain name, I will now proceed to share with you the benefits of my experience & my observations about naming websites.

Depending on your target market and your business model, naming your domain could lead to serious repercussions.

For example, I’ve a website named, onlinebeginnersguide.com. Wait, you probably knew that, because you’re now setting smack dab in the middle of it…

Anyway, the rationale for choosing such a limiting domain name as onlinebeginnersguide.com was, well I figured it was better than the URL it replaced, which was: the-home-grown-biz-advocate.com. Can you imagine people typing into a browser such an messed up domain name/URL address like that one?

Seriously, what was I thinking back in 2000?

Pretty dumb domain name choice, if you ask me. Yet, at one time, the-home-grown-biz, etc, etc, and etc, website had an ‘Alexa.com’ popularity rating between 53,000 and 54,000. That’s almost unbelievable for such a messed up url, isn’t it?

Especially for what was a one man operation…

Along about 2004 I got too sick to continue maintaining and updating the afore mentioned web site. By 2005 it was quickly fading into obscurity. When I started feeling better, I added much of its content a new site that I called, you guessed it: onlinebeginnersguide.com, which is a better site name, don’t you think?

Yeah, I thought so too. Then why does this damn site have a dismal 2 million in popularity rating? Again, according to ‘Alexa.com’.

Both sites serve almost the same niche. Both site’s rely upon lead capture, email marketing, content publishing, off page and on page SEO techniques to get targeted traffic.  So why the big difference in popularity rankings?

Was I just a better marketer back then? No way.

I suspect the primary reasons the-home-grown-biz-advocate.com outperformed the seemingly better named onlinebeginnersguide.com lies in how web 2.0 and social sites have completely changed the Internet landscape.

I wasn’t marketing online when web 2.0 and social media started and became popular. And, ten months ago when I started working my Internet business again, I was totally ignorant of these changes.

Instead of taking advantage of these new marketing channels, I’ve been setting up and using the same online marketing strategies that worked well before I got sick. And, they still do work.

Yet, they’d work better if  I’d incorporate some of the new Internet media channels along with the old strategies. I’m not there yet. But I’m studying and doing small tests to find out what works for me.

I realize we didn’t talk a lot about choosing your site’s domain name. Why should we have? I told you from the start that there was too much information floating around already. If you think about it, it’s not the domain name, anyway. Instead it’s who you target and what you do to get targeted traffic.

Stay casual,
Mr Ed

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