Increasing Your Company's Web Presence: Tips on Selecting URLs and Email Addresses

There are some important tips you should know for your small business that will help increase your web presence.  Selecting the right URL that reflects your company's name and services properly as well as emails that are custom to that domain are a good place to start.

Obviously your company name with a .com after it is ideal but with the virtual real estate quickly shrinking, it can be challenging to obtain your first choice.  If starting a new business, make sure you first obtain an appropriate URL before going forward with a company name.  Some points to consider:

• Keep it as short as possible. This simply makes it easier for people to remember. 

• Keywords are essential for search engine optimization.  If you have a salon, adding "salon" or "hair" within the URL further describes your company and assists in search engine optimization (SEO) when people are searching for particular services.

• Logical variations, like incorporating your location, can help distinguish your business to possible customers.  So if petesmotors.com is taken and your business is in Arizona, use petesmotorsaz.com.

• If .com is taken, consider using an alternate suffix like .net, .biz, or .us instead.

• If your already have a company name and the URL is taken, you can make an offer to buy it.  Many are owned but unused.  Also, these can become available if the owner doesn't renew the URL so keep checking back on it's status.  Keep in mind though that purchasing an existing URL can be very expensive.

• If your have a name that can be frequently misspelled, obtain the misspelled URL as well so you can link it to the correct one.

Also, avoid URL shortening services that take long URLs and redirect them to shorter ones.  Many are slow and unreliable and if the provider goes out of business, it can leave your website inaccessible if someone attempts to use the out of business provider URL.

Another important choice is having your business emails be connected to your website URL.  Having an email like pete@petesmotorsaz.com is more professional than a non-business one like pete@yahoo.com.  It also raises your contacts and customers' awareness of your website through repetition and consistency.

Laying the proper foundation with a good URL for your website is crucial.  Of course, that is only the beginning as how you manage your digital real estate is important too.  Keeping your site updated with current content is essential.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us!  Our experts at Computime can help you with all your IT needs including setting up business URLs, emails and networks within offices and homes.