When deciding on a domain name for their website most businesses tend to go with their company name, so Joe Bloggs Computer Store registers www.JoeBloggsComputerStore.com Seems perfectly reasonable, and you should certainly register your company name, so nobody else gets your traffic, or worse still hosts offensive content under it. However it shouldn't be the only domain you register and it wont be the domain bringing the majority of visitors to your site. Unless you are Coca-Cola, Apple, Toyota or some other global corporation very few people are going to know your business name, so they are not going to search Google for it either. Taking the example here of Joe Bloggs Computer Store: If I want to buy a new laptop computer I'll type “buy laptop computer” or “laptop computer” or something similar into a search engine, and see what comes up. It's not likely I'd be typing in Joe Bloggs Computer Store, or any other business name. So your domain should be related to the product or service you sell. Google has a fantastic free tool which lets you see what people are searching for. As I write this post the phrase “buy laptops” is searched for around 1,000,000 times per month worldwide. And this figure only includes those searching in Google, never mind all the other (admittedly less significant) search engines. If your domain name exactly matches the phrase entered into the search engine, you have a much greater chance of appearing on the first page of search results, and potential customers will be more inclined to buy from your site if the domain name exactly matches what they are looking for. Of course, all the “good” domains have already been registered, but with a little creative thinking you can still find some great names.

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