domain names and internet marketing

A reader of my newspaper column asks:

“Hello, I read one of your article and had a question. How important do you think domain names are to internet marketing and what should the domain name have in it for effective marketing?”

Domain names are fairly important, but not the end-all of internet marketing.

If you want people telling your name to their friends, it needs to be easy to say and easy to spell. Take my other blog- Advice from the Top. That blog lives at Advicefromthetop.com, as you would expect. Easy to say, hard to misspell.

I would mention that your domain matters less if no one is supposed to be sharing it with friends and colleagues, but why not choose a melodious name?

2 Responses to “domain names and internet marketing”


  1. 1 Linda January 28, 2008 at 5:40 pm

    Do you recommend capitalizing the first letter in each ‘word’ of a domain name so that it is easy to read and recognize? For example, yours could be AdviceFromTheTop.com.

  2. 2 brianatportent January 28, 2008 at 9:57 pm

    It depends. If your domain is easy to say and spell like it should be, then it is not so important to capitalize names, because it doesn’t look good. I like the aesthetic of advicefromthetop more than with caps.

    On the other hand, if you have a hard to say name, then maybe you should capitalize the individual words to help people parse it out.

    Same goes if it is your brand identity- ZAAZ tends to be all caps or ZaaZ, so they may want to be http://www.ZaaZ.com for the sake of staying with the brand.


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Portent Interactive

Portent Interactive is a full-service internet marketing agency in Seattle. Check out some of our work in our portfolio. Want to hear more about our services? Email me or call me at 206 575 3740 (ask for Brian Keith), or leave a comment on my blog.