By Isaiah O’Connor

I was working on another blog over the weekend when I heard about something that President Trump did to Joe Biden.  Joe had started a new campaign to target the Hispanic vote and called it "Todos Con Biden" (Spanish for "All with Biden") Trump’s team saw the twitter and YouTube Announcement and immediately looked online and noticed that the domain todosconbiden.com was still available and purchased it.

So now when you visit the site you get a picture of a cross-armed Biden looking down with a message that in both Spanish and English, "Oops, Joe forgot about Latinos. Then in English only “Joe is all talk.”  You get two buttons, that lead you to Trumps Latino campaign website, and a message on the bottom that states “Paid for by Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. www.donaldjtrump.com”

Like him or not, this was a brilliant move. Now to be fair apparently it has happened to Trump as well with some anti-Trump people doing the same to him on one of his campaigns pushes.

You have likely already seen how this ties into doing business.  It is very obvious that getting and maintaining the domain name for your website is of very high importance.  I have seen this before in other industries and places before, even with non-profit organizations.

Let us take a step back for a moment and explain some things for those that may not know the technical terms that I will be using.

First of all, what is a domain? A domain is what your website is called. For example my business’ domain is ballooneventagency.com. To a computer, that name is actually a long list of numbers. While a long list of numbers may be easy for some to remember, it is not as easy for most to remember, and it really tells you nothing about the website. So a domain name gives you something easy to remember and may tell you a bit about the type of website you are going to.

Secondly, a domain name is something you own, and you keep it for as long as you pay the registration fee. No one can take it from you unless you violate the terms of service, or fail to pay the fees on time.  So if you can get and purchase a domain name that works well for you, its yours.

And lastly, a domain name can and does affect your Search Engine Optimization (SEO)which is a very important detail. In a nutshell, SEO is how easy (or hard) you are to find with a search engine.  I will be writing more on this at a later date.

That clears up the basics. As you can see, when your operating a business getting and keeping the best domain name for your company is of vital importance.  Matter of fact, choosing your business name can even be influenced by the availability of the domain name you are looking for. But it should not be the only factor in deciding your brand name.

Now you really need to both take the time to research your domain name, as well move quickly once you choose it.  Let me explain when I first started up I called my company Unplugged entertainment, and as that domain name was taken, I used the domain name of O’Connor Entertainment which was available.

I failed on two major points. First of all, neither my company name or my domain name was very clear in the way they related my business. This, among many other things, caused my website to be virtually invisible on Google searches. I had my website up on day one, and three years in, I had two or three people ask me if I had a website because they had been looking for balloon decorators/entertainers and could not find me. In that entire time, I got zero leads from my website. Now I have fixed it I get about one or more a month.

There are several things you need to think about when choosing domain names. Things like name length, memorability, easy to spell, descriptive, etc. Matter of fact there are entire blog posts about how to choose a domain name.

When you are starting a business, one of the first things you need to do is register your domain name of choice. You do not even need a website to attach to it, you can buy and hold a domain name for as long as you want and the cost is minimal depending on the domain you want to use.  Make sure you do not let slip in public before you register it. If it is an amazing or clever name, someone else may jump in and snag it, just like Trump did with Biden. 

Now, this is all just barely scratching the surface when it comes to domains and website building in general. When it comes to your business a website and a good domain name are essential tools in today’s economy.

Now, this is something we are experienced in, and we can help you through the gritty details. We have two packages available where we help you set this up.

So in summary when you start a business you need a website, a good domain, and you need to make sure you secure it before your competition.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Entrepreneur
Isaiah O’Connor.

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