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Choosing a website's name and the Horlicks factor.
The name you choose for your company website is something requiring a deal of thought.
Thought not least about how you plan to publicise your site once it goes live. (See Searching, sort of searching and finding)
1. Search Engine Friendly Names.
Keyword based names are the issue here.
A good example of this is the newly mooted entertainmentcyprus.com.
It was on Google's first page within the first 24 hours of being published using the key phrase "entertainment in Cyprus" - search engines drop words like "in", "and" and "but" from search strings.
Remember that your name or the name of your company is not necessarily a keyword unless people are likely to search for you by your name. People like Chanel and Nike for example.
Further, I find that as time goes by the issue of "Search Engine Slavery" begins increasingly to annoy me.
We are approaching a situation where a website owner will be compelled to design his site to meet Google's SEO demands, before forking over a fortune every month for Google Ad words to get him found.
Then doubtless the owner will be click frauded out of the lot by a little old lady in Pakistan and then get go home with nothing.
(Read about click-fraud here - http://www.lookerscy.com/CMS/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2)
Let's make no bones about the value of a well-placed entry on Google or its competitors, it is a big plus. But how much must we cough up to maintain a fickle, unreliable and inconsistent "here today and gone tomorrow" presence on the various engines?
Too much say I.
2. Human Friendly Names.
These are names that "mean something" and rely more on the memory of the searcher for results rather than "cold" searching.
A Lookers client was trying to find a name
for his taxi company website, but wanted to avoid the keyword rich but rather bland taxiforcyprus type of identity.
Likewise, the use of numbers in names has a certain vogue just now - taxi4cyprus for example - but this type of pun only works in the English language.
A French viewer can translate an HTML site on Babel fish (http://babelfish.altavista.com) and read about what your company offers in a selection of languages - but the URL is not translatable, and translation software is not, at this time, pun sensitive anyway!
The final choice to go for grabthatcab.com is far more likely to linger in the memory especially when a well controlled analogue campaign (i.e. not digital - off line publicity) of posters, cards and flyers is used to follow up the site's launch.
A word of caution though - remember the Horlicks effect.
Our English readers will wonder what a hot, milky malted drink has to do with the internet - those not acquainted with this product will probably be goggling (not Googling) at the double meaning in this essentially innocent name.
Back in the 1930's, people apparently did not think that way. Today they do.
An excellent example of this effect - I have changed names to protect the guilty - is the website for Plain Homes - logically if unimaginatively entitled "Plain Homes UK" but reading as "Plain Home Suk" probably because we pay attention to how words start and finish, but very little to the middle characters.
Regardless as to the quality of their product - is it wise to put this on the website?
Oh dear….
About the Author
Englesos is a Web and Graphic Designer working out of the Famagusta area of Cyprus. See more of his work on http://www.englesos.net or else at http://www.lookerscy.com.
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