Guest post written by Caitlin Randolph of BrandBucket.com. On Monday, I am going to post my personal views on this topic.
In the sea of existing .com names many start ups find themselves stuck treading water, having an impossible time finding a keyword domain that is memorable yet inventive and unique. As the amount of internet entrepreneurs increase, you must find a way to stand out from all the other advertising companies that use ‘Advertising’ in the name. Ask yourself what makes your company different. Begin with a unique name; start ups need to be bold to be noticed. Try combinations of different words with various affixes and don’t pin yourself into a corner with an industry keyword.
It’s the information era, so consumers expect businesses to be more transparent. People want to read a sentence summing up a business rather than read a business name, make assumptions and then try to fit it into a business genre. Websites and networks like Twitter and Linkedin give web surfers all the short bits of your business that they want, so its now more important to have a memorable domain name and user name consistent with your business rather than fretting a business name consistent with your industry.
Take this lovely website for example, Patrick knows what appeals to people – food. ChefPatrick.com is an inventive domain name that makes you hungry. A ‘hunger’ for information is exactly what it appeals to for web surfers. A connotation like ‘hunger’ is far more important than the literal meaning. Patrick does not cook on his website but he does discuss what is cooking in the hungry world of domaining. It is this inventiveness that gives Patrick a very brand rich domain and leaves room to expand it into more. Put together words that you wouldn’t automatically match to create a great brand like Firefox and Facebook.
If matching up words isn’t successful, BrandBucket works to create all new words to build a brand off of. The three major parts used to invent names are suffix, prefix, and flair. These parts play a crucial role in the tone and connotation of your unique name. The suffix and prefix give the connotation of a name by adding word parts we are familiar with while the flair adds the tone of being fun, masculine, serious, relaxing, etc.
Prefix - Starts the word, examples: Syn, Sym- with, together (synonym, symbiotic, sync)
Suffix – Ends the word, examples: ster, er – Person who does something (swimmer, advertiser, friendster)
Flair – Adds memorability and activity to the new word, examples: io or i ending or the growing trend of dropping letters that are unnecessary to pronunce (Technorati, flickr)
Here is a breakdown of the domain name acentria.com using the three parts of a name. At first glance, you pick up a soothing feminine vibe due to the “ia” at the end, but in fact it has to do with something about circles, center or around because of ‘centr’. The letter ‘a’ at the beginning adds flow to the name as well as the benefit of being at the top in alphabetical listings. Every single word and every single domain can be broken down. This gives insight into how your customer will perceive your name.
A solid name allows your business to evolve and even reinvent itself at times. Don’t drown in the search for a domain name with your industry key word, but instead get creative and build a life raft of word parts and fun phrases to float right on out to the web.
Again and again, buy dot com , buy dot com—so why are people putting money on other extensions?
Please humor me….
If all of us just buy only dot com, then dot com value will rise.
“Don’t drown in the search for a domain name with your industry key word, but instead get creative and build a life raft of word parts and fun phrases to float right on out to the web.”
And then spend the rest of your time and money explaining to people what it is you actually do… I would imagine the percentage of people that think Patrick is actually a chef and not a domainer is right around 99%.
There are so many other obstacles of trying to make a website/business successful why make it more difficult with a made up word as your domain?
I’m sure people know who I am and what I do!
orly?
Comment by Chef Patrick 2009-06-15 20:55:4
Honestly I’m not an SEO or Facebook expert and would have no idea where my Facebook page would rank. This was never something calculated when selecting the name. It was simply a vanity selection, a name that I thought would be cool to have.
Why did I select it over my own brand. Personally I love my brand but am getting a little tired of answering the question, do I cook, lol.
http://www.chefpatrick.com/controversy-around-facebookcomproblogger/#comment-3961
I don’t know how you are mixing a Facebook name in with my domaining blog. I use Facebook for a lot more than just reaching out to domainers. Of my Facebook friends I’d say that only 1/3 of them are domainer related.
“I would imagine the percentage of people that think Patrick is actually a chef and not a domainer is right around 99%.”
There is no way this is accurate. You are telling me that 99% of my nearly 30,000 visits, roughly 29,700, think I am a chef? I’m sorry, but I disagree with you.
For the record. I am not agreeing or disagreeing that keyword domain investing is the way to go. This is a guest post, my views are different than expressed by Caitlin.
I’m not talking about the people that already visit your blog obviously they know what you do – I should have made that more clear in my initial post.
I’m talking about people that don’t know who you are – the people you would meet and lets say an affilate marketing conference or anywhere outside the domainer space and you say your blog is chefpatrick.com.
I get the point of the guest post here (to promote the made up word domains for sale on brandbucket)- but in all reality it’s bad domaining advice imho.
Correct, people that don’t know me need an introduction. I enjoy that though, my name is a conversation piece and an ice breaker.
My intentions are not to promote BrandBucket. It is to show a different point of view, one that Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook and a few other companies have been successful with.
I’ll elaborate more of my views in tomorrows post.
Thanks for your input Jeff.
You have dotcom(s) or you don´t have anything! Even if another extension containing the same keywords as your dotcom does is ranked better, in a mid-large scale YOU as the dotcom owner will WIN the game! Look on the current “battle” between BlackFriday.info vs. BlackFriday.com, no doubt, .com WILL WIN, maybe not the next week but in the next months!
I would never have the time to explain to the public, business people why a .net would be better to remember than the king of extensions.
Regards
The keyword rich Names are not replaceable or ignorable. The reason is the build in traffic they curry with them. Any start-up can well start-up with a keyword rich domain name than the other.
What you have said is good to coin a new word to match your business. But, do keep this in mind, you need to pour some cash to promote and brand that invention.
I am brainstorming for a Domain related names. Nothing but I had to coin 2 generic words. OmegaNames.com is the final outcome. But, I know how difficult & expensive it is going to be to align it with Domain name industries.
Just my thoughts . . .
‘the current “battle” between BlackFriday.info vs. BlackFriday.com’
I just posted somewhere else (so much for branding!) that the .com looks like a parking page. I wonder how much of the traffic is from people looking for the .info?
Interesting.
- Paul
Blackfriday.info is the number one natural search result on Google. Provide what users want and you will be on top regardless of TLD, especially if the .com is parked.
This post really separates two different worlds. Domainers focus on the category specific generic. A lot of entrepreneurs are ego maniacs. Perfect example I had a friend who got a start up going, I said you should look at the Generic Category name.com, He said “F that, this is my baby if it works everyone will remember the name I made up that I created. I don’t want to be search.com I want to be Google.com for example. Talking to him about explaining the name and the traffic the generic would get meant nothing.
I can honestly say outside of the domaining world I have never met a person in any business who cared what a domainer thought, or the so-called DOMAINER RULES.
Obviously some domainers jump on the brandable wagon too. Why ? They have no great names, they do not have the budget to acquire in the secondary market. So they figure a 5 L.com pronounceable is the way. Screw Logo.com I got iLoga.com its memorable. It has little value to a domainer and the only value comes from building a site and maybe the name takes off.
The flipside is Google is not successful for any reason the writer of the article mentioned about naming. They are successful because they are smart and had an algorithm to take over search. They could have been called search.com or joystick.com or SergeiLarry.com if they were total ego maniacs.
Everyone interprets brandables differently, according to the writer ia brings about the soothing feminine vibe. Is dementia soothing and feminine ?
Bottom line people will make up the right answer to go with their agenda. WHEN THE LEGEND BECOMES FACT PRINT THE LEGEND. Again IMO
As a domainer and an entrepeneur before that I have to wholeheartedly agree with the gist of this post. Never been crazy with slapping random prefixes and suffixes together though. But I think its possible to be creative and relevant when choosing an alternative domain name.
Case in point:
In 2008 I was in the graffiti removal business and after buying some geo related domains to point to my main site I realized there was something to these domain names. I noticed that graffitiremoval.com had an expiration date in July of 2008, so I backordered it. Well I was outbid at the backorder auction, I hadn’t yet realized the true potential of domain names. To cut it short I hand regged Dtagr.com and Dtagrs.com before the end of August. That name worked very well for me, was short,memorable and frankly it surprised people when they saw it for the first time.
I have switched to domaining full-time but still get calls on my toll-free number asking about greaffiti removal, and from all over North America.