By Theo McLanahan

The quickest way to getting eyeballs on your business these days is by establishing an online presence and central to establishing a powerful online presence is choosing a domain name that will attract the right customers.

Unfortunately, many people overlook this important step. Let’s look at a few tips for getting a domain that will attract the right customers to your site.

1. Make Sure Your Domain Describes Your Business

Your domain name should make it clear to your visitors what your website is about, even before they land on the site. Don’t make them guess what you’re offering.

For example, if your name happens to be Sue Brown and you own a hair salon called Sue’s Hair Salon, get a domain name like, www.sueshairsalon.com instead of www.suebrown.com. Seems pretty obvious, but you’ll be amazed at how many business owners use their personal names as domain names instead of choosing one that specifically describes their business.

Keep it as short as possible as well. It’s easier for your customers to remember and they’re less likely to make typing errors when they enter it in their web browser.

2. Get A Domain That Includes Your Keywords

It’s becoming increasingly important for business owners to have their websites indexed and ranked well in search engines like Google.com, MSN.com and Yahoo.com. And it helps this cause tremendously if you have a keyword-rich domain name. The reason for this is simple: Your potential customers search using specific keyword phrases to find what they’re looking for.

If you’d done the research and used these customer-specific keyword phrases in your domain name, more than likely your website will be listed on the very first page of the search engines, outranking your competitors because you had exercised due diligence where keyword-rich domain names were concerned.

There are plenty of other things you’ll need to do to get good rankings in the search engines, but your domain name sets the foundation for everything else. Also, avoid using dashes in your domain even if it makes it easier to find a keyword-rich name. Hyphens are believed to hurt your rankings in some search engines.

3. Do You Really Need .com?

Well, the answer is yes and no. There’s no reason you can’t use a different extension like .net or .biz if that’s the only way you can get the domain you want. It’s not the best choice however, because everybody thinks in terms of .com. If your site uses something else, it’s going to be an uphill battle to get people to recognize your site. If someone else already owns the .com version, they’re going to get a lot of free traffic thanks to your marketing.

How would you feel if you spend time and money marketing your website and some of those people wound up on your competitor’s customer list instead?

If you’re setting up a website for specific types of organizations, a non-profit group for example which should use .org, the best way to go is to stick with .com.

So don’t rush into picking your domain name. Research your market and find the keyword phrases that people are searching for. There are quite a few websites that let you research this information, such as Wordtracker.com and GoodKeywords.com. Putting the effort in up front will pay off in the long run.

About the Author:

Struggling to get your internet business off the ground but feel adrift in a sea of gurus and products promising instant riches? Visit the Internet Marketing Chaos site for a hype-free look at how to start and run your business. Visit http://www.netmarketingchaos.com for more helpful info This and other unique content ‘domain name’ articles are available with free reprint rights