The 4Ps of Website Domain Name Selection
October 5, 2009 by Achinta "Archie" Mitra
Filed under Branding, Business in a Box, Make Money, Niche Marketing, Search Engine Marketing
Your are probably familiar with E. Jerome McCarthy’s classic 4Ps of marketing that he first proposed in 1960. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, here’ a quick recap:
Product — an object or a service that is mass-produced or manufactured on a large scale with a specific volume of units.
Price — the amount a customer pays for the product.
Place — the location where a product can be purchased. It is often referred to as the distribution channel.
Promotion — all of the communications that a marketer may use in the marketplace
When it comes to Internet Marketing, probably one of the first things you have to do is choose a domain name for your online business. This is one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make. To help you with this important first step, I’ve come up with the 4Ps of website domain name selection.
Whether you’re creating a blog that will act as the hub for your business or registering a domain for a niche site, you need to take the time to find the right domain because changing domain names after you’ve built up traffic and credibility can do irreparable damage to your business.
Use these 4Ps as guidelines to help you find an ideal domain name for your site.
1. PURPOSE
Determine the primary purpose of your website. Is it to establish you as an expert in a niche? If so, you’ll need to do some keyword research to figure out which phrases would naturally attract traffic.
Are you buying a domain to sell a product? If so, your product name or a variation of the product name should be in your domain name.
Ideally, your website’s domain should describe what the website is about, for example, my domain name is diymarketingcoach.com and it is about providing do-it-yourself marketing guidance to Internet marketers.
You could also use popular keywords in your domain name, for example, quickfatlosshelp.com for a rapid weight loss site.
Determining the primary purpose of you website will help you decide what keywords to use.
2. PRESENCE
Is it critical to have the exact keyword phrase in your domain name? For some websites, you may be able to get by using another similar phrase. However, for others you may need that exact phrase. In such cases, you can try adding hyphens, prefixes or suffixes to your domain name if your exact phrase is not available.
This way you’ll still be able to use the exact phrase and establish your site in your niche. A general rule of thumb is to use no more than two hyphens in a domain name.
3. POTENTIAL
How do you plan to grow your site? By this, I mean are you choosing a domain name for a mini-site or is it a sales letter? Or are you planning to launch a portal for content with hundreds of pages? Look at my main domain name for example. Diymarketingcoach.com is a broad and all encompassing name for a site that includes many pages and posts about various topics on Internet marketing. Whereas for one of my information products, “Upsell Profits Blueprint,” I’ve picked a specific domain name, upsellprofitsblueprint.com.
4. PRICE
You can buy any domain name you want as long as you’re willing to pay the price. In most cases though, you’ll want to register an unused domain name. These domain names cost anywhere between $7 and $12 depending on who you use (I use www.godaddy.com for my domain registration).
However, if you have a very specific business name and you must have that name as your domain name, you can try contacting the domain owner. Do a whois search to get the domain owner’s name and contact information (not always visible to the public).
Try to negotiate a fair price to buy the domain name if the current owner is willing to sell it. There are services available that specialize in buying and selling domain names.
These 4Ps will come into play whenever you are choosing a domain name for your website. Carefully consider how your domain name will be used before you buy one.
Have you heard of domain flipping? If you are looking for a no-risk, no-worry method of making a living online, it just doesn’t get any better than this. With domain flipping, you can literally take a $9 domain name and flip it for $90, $900, even $9,000 quickly and easily!
Grab a copy of my small report “Profitable Domain Flipping” right now and master how to flip domains for large profits, quickly and easily.
Having a keyword rich domain name can definitely assist in your ranking efforts, this will help in the linking back of anchor text to your web site. Unfortunately most of the keyword rich domain names have been taken, so that means you need to find an alternative keyword rich domain name or find a way to use your keywords while still making it easy for people to find you.
Network Marketing is a very good way to promote your products in a short period of time.”*~