What's in a name? Deciding on a name for my business

[androo]

Hi hi...
In the next 6 weeks or so, I'll be registering myself as a sole trader and registering a business name.

I'll be doing web development, web hosting and website maintenance.

I've got a couple of ideas for a business name but I'm wondering if it actually really matters when all my business will be online. In this current world of SEO, link directories etc, does it really matter a whole lot what you call yourself as long as people can hit you up from Google, Yahoo etc?

Take a look at this site for example. If you had a 'bricks and mortar' business and put 'V7N' on the window, how many customers would you get? To get here, I googled 'webmaster forums' and took no notice of the domain name but more notice of the name of the actual site.

I guess it's all about marketing in the end. I could call my business 'Harry' and if I did my marketing and SEO correctly, I could very well be swimming in cash :-)

I guess the conventional wisdom of naming your business to specify what it is you actually do has been thrown out the window to a certain extent.

Google = search engine
Amazon = sells books (and other stuff I know)
TuCows = software directory/download

What do you think? Should I stress about my business name or be happy with something that 'works for me'? If you have a business name, what's your experience with naming your business?

Any constructive input appreciated.

Androo

[roger_d]

It does matter. If you plan to build a business and brand it then you want something that is memorable and easy to type (read no hyphens).

If you are more interested in search (like in your example above...finding webmaster forums) and plan to build links then having your main keyphrases in the site name makes it possible to get links from quality directories using those keyphrases.

For example, if your domain was webdesign.com then yahoo, business.com, starting point, botw, etc would be willing to list you that way, and provide anchor text for your inbound links that is relevant and effective for your seo campaign.

Not only that, when you build some domain authority and other sites start linking to you it will be quite natural for many of them to link to you using your domain name, most of the time without the tld.

The real issue in many niche's is what domain names are left for new sites

[netdebut]

I'd I have to say that naming your domain really doesn't matter much anymore. Although, I still prefer to name a domain with a little indication of what I'm doing. Just a little.

If you have Google as your selected search engine for your tool bar, type in "baking recipes." Even if your domain was called "bakingrecipes.com" the page that's going to load is joyofbaking.com. So forget about loading 10 listings/results, it just goes straight there.

So go ahead, tell me that it does matter? Tell me how you'll get around that if you were the 'baking recipes.com.' Need I say more?

It USE to matter. That's old jargon ever since Google kept changing their algorithm. 4 months ago, my site was a PR4. No changes to my site, it went down to a PR2 3 weeks ago. 2 weeks ago, it dropped to a 0. Why is that? Who knows. I really don't care. I still get hundreds and thousands of visitors everyday WITHOUT the search engines.

Androo, you clicked on v7n's link not because the name captured your attention, but simply because it was in the top 10 results, right? I bet you also clicked on webmaster-forums and masterworld, too, right? I bet the reasons weren't JUST because it was in the top 10, but because it was more of what you were looking for. This time, the name captured your attention.

That's really the only difference anymore. I still suggest to register a good descriptive name, but it doesn't have to be long. Good luck and keep us posted.

[CaliforniaLogic]

Hello androo.
Happy Saturday to you.

Logic here.

Here is a twisted take on the naming of your business and branding and looking out 5 to 10 years from today.

We are Viper Logic (Showing our name only to share our logo)
I put that there so you can see our logo, it is branding 101.

When we started it was not the direction to where we are at today.
We were for sure not wrong when we bought our domain name and Incorporated in May 1993. We named the corp. Viper Logic and bought the .com of this as well.

Here is where we are getting at it all.

We remember 13 years ago (last decade) when Coke and IBM removed the www. and we see where it is going branding to become say visit Coke without and ending so you hopefully use no hyphens, and you are a .com.
See this is the best way we all are going to shorten the URL's one more time towards the end of this decade or just into the coming decade. Love living in the information age.

Answer is: You are starting out, you do not yet know how much effort you will need to apply, and you might have to be abrand awarness product or service one day running advertisments on TV, Rdio and Printed materials? So you need a .com, you need a name that is the business name and you need an easy short name that will hold onto you future clients and their returning to your site often so as to not sway to a competitor for the same product or service.

SEO/SEM, tags back links, articles, blogs and forums all for each single web site is now the norm. Today this top of page ranking is truly moved to a higher level of the game as we see it and we see what we have had to incorporate to move up and forward and what will truly call a buyer to ACTION.

Hint:
Look outside of the box to what everyone is:
A= Not doing all things SEO/SEM consistantly?
B= Not thought to do?
We do something that is not being done and it has nothing to do with the Internet but it does bring traffic to our web sites that it is for. All for our promotions it became and acceptible printed nitch material that we are growing though slow someday maybe in 5 or 8 years from now will work for us. So long as the monthly numbers are increasing we are fine with it.

Just some Logic thoughts.
Thought for Kevin? (netdebut)
As far as Kevin Lam (above my post) page ranking and top of the search engines
You say you did not touch your site? that is possibly the ranking losses? Stale stagnate sites have content freshness issue we might thnk the one at the top of the search for "baking recipes" has dynamic content.

As for it does not matter about your company name (we disagree unless) or even your domain name it is only true if you are just out to FLIP a product no passion then move on to something else.

Our branding results
We built and continue to build on our brand, though again small we do have monthly clients all of them we service well and you might not know (as we do not know you) it is more cost effective to retain a client then to develop a new one. But again we do not know your product or service so cn not share with you more.

Logic...

[netdebut]

Hey Logic,

Great advice for our colleague, Androo.

Let's talk about branding. You argue that a business name is important for branding. I beg the differ. Branding is more than just the name. The name can be ANYTHING. What's the true importance is how it's promoted, what the heck it is and what does it do?

Sure, we know what yo-yo's are, but was it always known as the "yo-yo?" Mmnn, no! This little toy is the 2nd oldest toy ever known to man (1st were dolls). "Yo-yo's" started back over 2,500 years ago.

"In ancient Greece, the toy was made of wood, metal and terra cotta... Around 1800, the yo-yo moved into Europe from the Orient. The British called the yo-yo the bandalore, quiz or the Prince of Wales toy... The word yo-yo is a Tagalog word, the native language of the Philippines, and means 'come back.' In the Philippines, the yo-yo was a weapon for over 400 hundred years.

Source: http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa120297.htm

The average person thinks of the yo-yo as a toy, but as mentioned above, it was known as a weapon for over 400 years. It could have been called a ya-ya for all we know. It could have been branded as a zo-zo. Whatever.

Heck, what about the Rubik's? Some people think it's spelled "Rubix," but they all think of the same 3x3 cube with 6 different colors. So... no, the name isn't really that important. It's important HOW you brand it.

Thanks for the insights about why my PR may have possibly gone down. You're probably absolutely right about that. Problem is, a site like mine will not have a lot of dynamic content. Not because it's a one-time deal, flip and move on, but because there isn't much we can change.

Let me ask you something, how often do you think Google changes their home page? If there are ANY changes, it's mainly the 1-2 lines of text under the search field and sometimes the "Google" image/logo is changed out with the corresponding holidays.

That's not a whole lot. The only thing we could possibly change on our site are recent news. So what's the difference?

I still can't see my site would drop to a 0 just because I didn't have any dynamic content for it to crawl. I still had plenty of traffic, new pages added and plenty of links pointing our way.

Regardless, I really don't care about that. We're doing fine without the search engines.

[CaliforniaLogic]

Hey thank you Kevin, I actually knew about the yoyo because of a project we are on for YoYoFish.com (not live yet). But thank you for the deep and rich history of our friend the YoYo.
As for comparing Google to content it is not a good choice? becuase search engines really do not need indexing. But I see what you are trying to say about the Google site.

Ok yes the cube is truly a great item that pulled through however here on this forum we think that you will find say 1 or 2 companies that will come out of there ideas and be the next cube or search engine.
What I was sharing is the reality of the truth about reducing the odds to have a little chance to even make a living. One needs to use all aspects available to them, any edge, and any efforts possible.

As far as your rating not seeing your site, and not looking at it objectively it was a shot in the dark. Not having a rating though is a real serious issue for the overall value of your site in my personal opinion. It may be that you do not need capitol or that you do not intend to sale it it might only be a part of a real brick and mortar operation but your prdicument has me wondering what your site has done to come across as and issue to Google? How is it at Ask, Live and Yahoo?

Ok glad to see y that you are a great and thorough poster because I like what you right and how you provide detailed answers.

Have a great rest of the weekend in South Carolina.

Logic in always sunny Palm Springs, California.

[netdebut]

Hey Logic,

Yeah, not a great comparison, but at least you know what I mean. My site is FairAdsNetwork. We're pretty new and if anything, I guess I can try to work on bringing it up a few points, but I don't see how it matters much if the majority of my traffic is NOT from the search engine.

Perhaps you could explain to me why it is important that I have a high PR if I am not using search engines as my primary source of traffic. It would be greatly appreciated.

I'm not sure what my status is like at Ask, Yahoo! and so on. If you'd like, do a search for "fair ads network" in quotations and you'll see the difference. Thanks. I like to be as thorough as possible when explaining something. However, I know I write too much sometimes; so, I try to shorten it.

[netdebut]

Just fyi, the URL in my signature is a new domain. I'm starting a new marketing project. So yeah, it's not pointing to fairadsnetwork.com, it's pointing to adnetworksolution.com. I just registered that today and I'm going to see how much traffic I can send there without search engines. I'll be recording this case study on my blog.

[CaliforniaLogic]

Ok thank you, off to check out your site Kevin.
We like your writing it is complete instead of those short things we see on some forums.

Ok thank again talk soon,
Logic..

[androo]

Hi all...
Wow! Thank you all so much! The things that has been missing since I started web development is good advice and support. I believe I've found both here.

I haven't made a decision about what I'll do yet but you have all given me a lot to think about that otherwise wouldn't have occurred to me.

Thank you very much!