Branding Your Site: Free Yourself from SERPs! - What do You do?
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So how can you, as a website owner, or a budding e-entrepreneur, do to brand your site, and position yourself in the mind of the man with the mouse, so that instead of searching on Google, he actually types your website into the address bar? In this situation, you no longer worry about continually following up with your visitors; they come to you willingly. Let me share some of the ways you can brand your website and yourself effectively.
If you do anything at all, don't do this
When searching, I come across sites called www.tonsilshelp.com or www.bestcureforfootdisease.com, or even www.cars.com! Once, one of my clients purchased www.foreigndirectinvestment.com, but thankfully, he let it go. The silliest thing is that these kinds of domain addresses are the ones that are auctioned for extremely high prices, and some Internet marketing "experts" even advise their clients to name their sites after the niche they are in.
There is nothing more forgettable than a generic name. That is what a site like www.business.com is -- forgettable. It sounds contradictory; after all, by looking at the domain name, you can tell what the site is about. Yes, but with a million other names like that (ebusiness.com, onlinebusiness.com), your domain name, and hence your brand, is weak because it cannot be differentiated from everybody else.
Do This
Throw out the generic name, and get a proper name. Yahoo didn't call itself directory.com, Google didn't itself searchengine.com, and Amazon didn't call itself ebooks.com. Make sure your name is easy to type and spell. For example, one of my favorite sites on earth is gutenborg.com...or is it gutenbog.com? It must be gotenborg.com, but then I discover that it is a dot org! [And it is actually http://www.gutenberg.org/. --Ed.]
The point is, all this makes it hard for me to get to their site. Fortunately, they offer content that I find nowhere else, so I spend five to ten minutes searching for their site, but sometimes I cant be bothered. Please note: it is a non profit site. Great content is not everything, branding is everything. And naming is integral to branding.
Priceline is not a generic name, it is a proper name, since the two separate words are used out of context. Another good way to name yourself is by shortening your generic name. For example, off line General Electric is becoming GE, and a site like freebooks.com can become freeb.com.
Some other tips for naming include making sure your domain name is one of a kind. As noted, it should be easy to pronounce and spell. In some cases, a shock effect with names can work wonders, as with Yahoo, Napster, or XSAO.net.
Don't be one of the quickly forgotten sites, dependent on search engines for all your traffic! Start by naming your site well, offer great content, optimize and read on.
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