The Virtual Entrepreneur

What’s in a name?  A lot, actually.

Inventing a name for your on-line enterprise is perhaps one of the most important decisions you will make.  For many people it is an exciting experience enhancing dreams and aspirations.  For others, it is an exercise in frustration.  One way or another, it will probably take everything you’ve got in terms of creativity, marketing savvy and organizational skills to come up with your perfect cyber moniker.

Before you make your mind up, there are some things to take into consideration.  These may expand or contract your range of possibilities, depending on your creativity and the flexibility you bring to the naming exercise.

Domain Names

A domain name is the verbal web address (in both the technical and legal sense) that overlays the IP (internet protocol or digital) address where your web presence will be located.  Domain names are managed by an international organization called InterNIC which is responsible for insuring that each domain is unique.  Considering the number of websites currently in existence and being created every day, this is no small task. 

Structurally, domain names can include any unaccented letters from a to z, any digit from 0 to 9 and the hyphen (“-“) character.  Domain names are not case sensitive so you could advertise MyWebSite.com and your visitors would still reach you if they used your address without the upper case letters. 

The hyphen cannot be used at the beginning or the end of a domain name but can be used anywhere in between the first and last letter in the name.  You can even use two hyphens side by side (although I’m not sure why you would want to).  Contrary to some sources I have run into during my research, the underscore character ( “_” ) cannot be used in a domain name. 

The “dot” (full stop character) can only be used to separate DNS (domain name system) labels.  You can think of a DNS label as a block of information within an address.  In the example 123.Main-St.YourBurg.US, each group of characters between the dots represents a DNS label. Going from right to left, each DNS label is a sub domain of the label next to it.  YourBurg.US would be a primary domain name, Main-St is a subdomain of YourBurg.US and 123 is a subdomain of Main-St.  You can use this tidbit to gain some latitude in your naming exercise but more on that a bit later.  By the way, as I write this YourBurg.US is currently available if you want it! 

The minimum number of characters in a valid domain name is 3 and the maximum number (excluding the extension) is 63 but I think you’d have to be a little off to select a name anywhere near that long.

In order to expand the possible range of unique domains and help categorize the millions of registered web addresses in existence, ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) established and manages a system of extensions called Top Level Domains. TLD’s are used as a suffix attached to the actual name of assigned web addresses.  TLD’s can be used to identify both area of interest and/or the geographic area of a particular domain.  By definition then, “mywebsite.net.us” indicates that “mywebsite” is focused on internet related activities and is located or operates in the U.S.A.

A fully qualified domain is composed of the name you invent followed by the TLD(s) you select when you registered your domain.  A “dot” separates your selected name from each TLD and specifies the exact and unique location on the internet where your web presence is located.  One of the best lists of currently available TLD’s including intended use and restrictions for each can be found at Wikipedia.

While the intention of the top level domain system was to help categorize domains, the reality is that most TLD’s are available to anyone who wants to use them.  This fact in conjunction with the ability to create subdomains, has expanded the creative possibilities which can be exercised during the naming process. 

A great example of this is del.icio.us where “dot us” is the TLD for this site and “del” is a subdomain of the primary domain name which is icio.us.  Another creative example is welcome.to/aquariums where “dot to” is the TLD for Tonga and “/aquariums” is actually a specific page on the “welcome.to” web site.  This site has nothing to do with Tonga, it’s simply an interesting way to name a web presence.

While there is a great deal of latitude in this naming system, the conventional model for naming a business web presence is still to use the core extensions and stick with a name that describes your business.  The most common core extension is of course, the venerable “dot com”. 

In fact, if you simply type a name without prefix or extension into the address bar, most popular browsers will automatically default to the “dot com” extension and load the page associated with that address.  I tried this in the most recent versions of Explorer, Firefox, Opera and Chrome.  Of these four, the only browser that didn’t behave this way was Chrome, which loaded a Google search page with related links instead (what a surprise! Chrome is a Google product).  This is important to note when you consider your expected audience and decide on the name and TLDs that you want to secure.

Aside from “dot com”, the most frequently used extensions are “dot net”, “dot biz” and “dot info”.  Unless you are intending to create a non-profit organization or a user group for your visitors, “dot org” should really not be included in your list of options since it is recognized widely for what it is. 

In my opinion, if you are going to follow a traditional approach, the “dot com” TLD is the only way to go.  I will not accept a “dot com” name unless I can also secure “dot net”, “dot biz” and any other variation that I think might represent a back door to accessing my visitors.  Too much work will go into developing my web enterprises and domain registration is too cheap to make the savings worth the risk down the road.

Key Words and Search Engine Ranking

Key words are words or short phrases that get to the core of your web presence.  Words like car, cooking and engineering are classic examples. 

In researching for this article, it seemed to me that most SEO’s (the crowd that claims it can get you on page 1 of a Google search) feel that including key words in your domain name has a significantly positive impact on search performance.  Many others seem to feel that key words in a domain name make no real difference. 

There is a good reason for this lack of consensus.  The algorithms that the major search engines use to rank pages are a big secret like the formula for Coke Classic.  Furthermore, these algorithms are updated and improved all the time. 

Without knowing what is really going on inside the search machines, it’s impossible to know which, if any domain name formats inherently perform better.  Personally, I think that while domain names may have been important to search engines way back in the dark ages of the internet (would you believe 1997?) they probably don’t have much influence on search rankings anymore.  It’s just too simple!

There’s also a school of thought that says that the days of search engine dominance as the primary referrers for web operators are numbered.  Social networking is claimed to be where the majority of visitors will come from.  I’ve been thinking about this ever since I ran into an article by Thomas Baekdal and I think it’s probably right on target.

The bottom line on this subject is that SEO (search engine optimization) should not influence your selection of a domain name.

Name Length and Composition

The length of your domain name is another one of these issues which seem to be a source of endless debate.  The general consensus is that for a traditional “dot com” type of name, shorter is better.  The problem with this point of view is that virtually all of the really short names are already taken.  This leaves most of us in the position of having to consider variants which may or may not satisfy the basic requirements of being easy to remember and to type.

Grouping several words into a recognizable phrase is the most direct approach.  My own domain name (Bizspacebuilders.com) is a typical example.

Additional variations you can consider include adding “My” or “The” to the front of the name, adding an “S” to the end of a name to make it plural, using hyphens between words in the name or using a misspelled variation like replacing an “S” with a “Z” at the end of a name.

If you’re considering a variation because your first choice is taken, you should understand that it’s likely some visitors will inevitably end up visiting the “other guy” just because they forgot the preceding “the” or the “s” at the end of your address.  If the “other guy” happens to also be a direct competitor, not only will you have lost the visitor, you may have also fed the enemy.  One way or another, if you are considering the use of a variant name you should visit any unadorned variations to see who you might end up sending traffic to.

Unless you’re leaning towards an inventive name form that includes a hyphen, the use of hyphenated names as a way to get a name that’s already taken is probably not a good idea.  Not only will visitors inevitably miss the hyphens when they key in the address, but traffic which you might get by word of mouth will likely be lost.  XYZ.com and X-Y-Z.com sound exactly the same when verbalized.

Trademarks, Trade Names, Domain Names and Branding

From a marketing perspective, developing a brand for your enterprise and your products and services is probably the most important thing you can do to insure the long term health of your business. 

Branding is the art of creating an association between your name and what you sell in the mind of your clients.  It encompasses the type, quality and range of your product offerings as well as the knowledge, service and support you provide.  When done effectively, the mere mention of a brand will elicit an understanding of everything your enterprise is about.  Developing a strong brand should be the ultimate marketing goal of every entrepreneur.

Your domain name needs to be included in your branding strategy.  This normally means that it will be used as a service or trademark and perhaps an operating trade name as well.  All of these should be used consistently in your web presence as well as your conventional advertising and on your product offerings to reinforce your brand and establish its connection with what you sell, what you do and who you are.

This brings us to some issues which are legal in nature so I had better point out that I approach this subject from the point of view and experience of a marketing professional.  I am not an attorney so I am not qualified to give you legal advice and even if I was an attorney, every situation is different.  You should seriously consider discussing your situation with a legal professional to make sure that you are aware of potential risks with respect to your plans.

You will recall, I mentioned that a domain name is actually an internet address.  This is not only true from a technical perspective but also from a legal one.  Registering a web address does not give you the right to use that address for your internet endeavor.  In fact, if a preexisting trademark matches the web address you have registered, the trademark owner probably has superior rights to the domain and you could find yourself in deep “do do” (that’s a technical term) as a result.

A trademark is a word, group of words and/or a design that appears on a product or product package and that is used to identify the item.  A service mark is basically the same thing but is used to identify a service and is used in advertising and literature related to the service.

Rights for marks of this kind come into effect when they are used commercially for the first time, providing they are not already in use for the same or similar product or service being sold by someone else. Establishing a date of first use is therefore very important in establishing ownership of a mark.  I have always taken samples of my first advertising and packaging materials and sent them to myself by registered mail (don’t open the envelope when it arrives, just put it in a safe place) as a way of formalizing date of first use while I go through the legal mechanisms required for registration of such marks which can take years to complete.

Keeping track of nationally registered marks in the U.S., is the responsibility of the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office).  Fortunately, the USPTO offers a database called TESS which can be accessed via the internet and provides a facility to do a quick check for identical or similar marks which are already registered.  Assuming you are going to use your domain address as a mark (which you should), you will want to check its availability as a service or trademark as well as its availability as a domain name before you actually register your domain.  Remember, if you don’t use your domain name as a trademark, you run the risk of losing it to someone who does. 

You should therefore have on line access to both a domain registrar such as godaddy or the WHOIS database of registered domains and the TESS database while you go through the process of dreaming up you web address.

Owing to the huge number of domain names being secured every day, almost everyone with an opinion agrees that you once you have found a domain name, you should register it without delay or you run a very real risk of losing it!

Keep in mind however, that TESS only covers trademarks which are nationally registered.  There are many trade names which are used as trademarks but only registered at the state level and many more trade and service marks which are not registered at all.  These can and should be searched by an attorney.

You can find a more complete treatment of the subject of trademarks and trade names as they relate to domains in the article on sitepoint by Judith Silver entitled “Is Your Company Name Legal”.  The trademark page of the USPTO website is also worth a read.

Ok, we’ve plowed through a ton of nuts and bolts but hopefully you are aware of what you can, can’t and should do when it comes to registering a domain name.  Let’s get to the fun stuff.  Here are my suggestions about how to go about creating a domain name:

• Hold a party.  Invite you best and most imaginative friends to help you brain storm ideas.  Make it a contest and offer a prize to the winner.  It’s amazing how creative people can be in this kind of environment and you get the added bonus of an immediate market survey as suggestions are made.  Besides, a brainstorming session with only one person is boring.
• Promote unorthodox thinking. Remember that your domain name is the first step you will take to create a brand image and some of the biggest and best brand names say nothing about the product they represent (Google, del.icio.us, Reebok…you get the idea!).
• Be creative. Remember, an effective domain name does not have to be obvious and does not have to contain key words.  Have a list of TLD’s handy and see if you can break down suggestions to incorporate a TLD or subdomains into the actual name instead of treating it as a mere extension.
• Keep a list of anything suggested that gets a rise out of your crowd.  Positive feedback is a great way to gauge possible market acceptance.
• Check each suggestion in WHOIS and TESS to make sure that it is available as a domain with all of the extensions that you want and that it has not been registered as a national trademark.
• Hold a vote.  With all this creative thinking going on, you may find that you have more than one name to consider and a group reaction is better than an individual opinion when it comes time to make a final decision.
• Don’t hesitate.  Once you decide on a name, register it without delay.  There is a seemingly endless supply of registrars out there.  Google “domain registrars” and pick  two or three.  Enter your order in all of them to see which one comes up with the lowest price.  Then complete your order with the one that gives you the best deal.
• Consult an attorney to have a full search carried out including state level trade names and unregistered trade and service marks.  If the search comes up clean, proceed with a formal registration.
• Use your domain name as a mark.  Remember, trademark rights apply as soon as you use your mark in commerce.  Use your domain name as the title for your web presence.  Design all advertising and packaging materials to include your marks and your domain name.   Consider sending samples of these materials to yourself by registered mail and do not open the envelopes when they arrive, just put them away in a safe place.  It will be a while before your formal registrations are approved so establishing date of first use is important.

I hope that I have given you some tools to work with as you search for your domain and expanded your thinking beyond traditional models.  If you still need some help, drop me a line!