Your domain name is like a restaurant’s location

If it doesn’t look appealing, no one will stop by.

Think of all the restaurants within in a few of miles of your house that you’ve never been to. Why is that?

Usually, it’s because you prefer to dine at other known places, and no one has ever recommended the local place to you.

So what hope does the local place have that you’ll ever stop by?

1. The restaurant name has to convey what they offer
2. You have to be in the mood for that
3. The sign and building appearance don’t turn you off
4. You’ve got no better options at that moment

That is a fair amount of serendipity to have the restaurant gain a single new customer organically. But when you think of it, that’s how SEO works too. You’re searching for something, you come across the name of a Web site that smells like it might be relevant, you scan the URL and pre-judge the quality of the result, and you decide to click or not.

Your domain name is literally the real estate the restaurant sits on. Choose it wisely.

.com, .net, and .org were the original three global top-level domains, they are still the best. Over the years, .ws, .tv, .biz, and others provided second-class alternatives, and .co is making some good inroads lately, but we’re about to get tons of new gTLDs added to the ecosystem. This will provide affordable alternatives for new businesses starting up, but in my opinion the diversity will only reinforce the grandeur of having a really good .com.

I’m going to share a personal real-life example, just to crystallize it. Yesterday I attended the funeral of a father of a close friend. He was Jewish, and the service was at Shalom Memorial Park. shalom.com was registered in 1995, and is currently not serving anything, so presumably it was unavailable for purchase. So in 2006, Shalom Memorial Park set up shop at www.shalom2.com. They could have gone with shalommemorialpark.com, but clearly that is more difficult to type and remember precisely. Someone made the decision that the “2" wasn’t going to hurt them. Of course they’re not on the first page of Google for “shalom” either, no one would expect them to be, but when someone is looking for a cemetery with the name “Shalom” in it, their short .com domain name reinforces the quality of the match.

Whether you are starting a restaurant or starting a Web site, make sure it is on a solid ground in a good location. You want it to be easy to come back to and let others know about it. Make sure your domain name look goods in print.

Just like relocating a restaurant in real life, there are tools available to manage a migration to another domain sometime in the future, but neither is without cost and risk. If a restaurant says “We’ve moved!” they stand the chance of losing customers who purely visited the restaurant because it was convenient on their way home. If a Web site changes domains, proper 301 redirects for all outstanding URLs ought to preserve the SEO juice, but if the user didn’t expect to land at a different domain, the experience can be a little disconcerting.

Open your eyes as you drive around, and notice all of the restaurants that you didn’t know where there before. Pick the most appealing one, find an excuse to visit, and see what they have to offer. Try to figure out why you haven’t heard of them before.

This is my second post on the subject of Web Hospitality. If comparing Web sites to restaurants makes sense to you too, please click the Recommend button below. And would you consider following the Collection?