Sep 8th, 2010 | Written by tc | Posted in Business |

As a new small business owner, choosing a business name is one of the most important tasks that you have in the early stages of creating your enterprise. You want a business name that is not only catchy, but also helps your new business to be found in search engines when people look for the service or product that you plan to offer.

As you compile your list of catchy company names, think in terms of what searchers will actually type in when they look for you. You may not know this, but a given domain name will rank better in the search engines for the exact word or words contained in the URL. Now this doesn’t mean that you will immediately jump to the number one position in Google for the term ‘Seattle dry cleaners’ if you are able to buy that domain name (you want the .com/.net or.org, not an obscure extension), the fact is that all else being equal you will have an advantage over other dry cleaning businesses in Seattle when it comes to your online marketing efforts.

Since registering a domain name that also functions as a catchy business name doesn’t cost you any more than registering one that is not particularly noteworthy, it really behooves you to do your research before you commit to any name. The business name on which you settle will be something that you really won’t be able to change down the line.

The tool that most people use to determine just how popular a search term is–i.e. how often people around the world type it into a search engine–is the Google Keyword Tools site. The interface is intuitive and by simply typing in a term that you’d like to analyze you can quickly quantify exactly how interested people are in this term.

Choosing from a long list of potential catchy names for your new business, perhaps compiled via a random name generator, doesn’t have to be difficult, and you don’t necessarily have to hire a search engine optimization specialist to help you in the process. Simply think like the people who will be searching for your product or service, and name your website accordingly, and in all likelihood you will start well ahead of your competition.

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