Choosing a domain name

Choosing a domain name is an important part of marketing your business and in general there are two approaches you can use.

1. You can buy a domain name that is based around your existing business name
    
2. You can buy a domain name based around keywords that are relevant to your business

The advantage of using a domain name based around your existing business name is that it is likely to be available and will help people find you via natural search results if they look for you online.

For example, if your business is called PeterSmithPainters, a good domain name will be petersmithspainters.com.

The advantage of using a domain name based around keywords is that you may find it easier to get your website ranked highly when people who do not already know your name are looking for a business like yours. This is especially true if you use a domain name that includes a location name.

For example, if Peter Smith is based in Swindon but no-one has heard of him, a good domain name will be swindonpaintersanddecorators.com because at the moment Google tends to pay a lot of attention to the words in domain names in determining where to rank them and, other factors being equal, swindonpaintersanddecorators.com will rank above petersmithspainters.com for searches like "swindon painters" and "swindon decorators".

Domain names are now cheap and probably the best solution is to buy several. At only a few dollars/pounds/euros it makes good business sense to pick up a few good domain names and, even if you don't create several different websites, you can just point all your domains at one website so that anyone entering any of these names in the address bar of their browser will find you.