Question about domain names posed on LinkedIn, and my response:

Do you recommend a short, easy-to-remember name OR a name that maintains consistency with the branding?
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I don’t think there is a “one-size-fits-all” answer to this question. Some factors to consider:

• How do you expect people to reach the site most often? If by clicking a link, the memorability of the Web address isn’t relevant. If by searching, consider the terms your prospect would search: A domain name should be selected that is likely to improve search results. If by hearing about the product or business, the domain name should be related to the name people would most likely hear. If by hearing about the Web site itself, the domain name should be memorable.
  
• How important is the branding, and how important is the Web address in that branding? For Whole Foods, it would be a bad thing if the company didn’t have wholefoods.com as its Web address. For Church & Dwight Co., maker of Pepsodent toothpaste, it doesn’t matter much that the company doesn’t use churchanddwight.com because nobody knows the company name. (I had to look on a toothpaste tube.) However, it is unfortunate that Pepsodent licensee Unilever-Indonesia owns pepsodent.com; one would think the U.S. market is more important for that brand.) If the Web site *is* the service (timeanddate.com), or the service is only online (paypal.com), then the domain name is crucial to branding. Keep in mind that once someone is on your Web site, the domain name isn’t very noticeable unless you draw attention to it (e.g., by displaying it in a logo or text on the page): It appears in the Web-address bar of the browser, which doesn’t stand out much visually, and perhaps in the window title or tab, which also is “outside the margins” of the browser window and therefore not very noticed.
  
• How unique is the product, service, or company, and how unique are the terms people would use to search for it? If it’s relatively unique, you have a pretty good opportunity to show up near the top of search results regardless of the domain name. A search for Dental Chair Manufacturer produces several results that didn’t include the phrase “dentalchair(s)” in their Web addresses. (One that did, sort of — www.midmark.com/products/dental/chairs — came up only fourth in the results.)
  

All of that said, it’s best to avoid confusing users by having a logo or business name that would make them think the Web address is different from what it is. In the aforementioned dental-chair category, take a look at http://www.summitdental.com/. The company emphasizes “SDS” in its logo. But sds.com takes you to a different company. I would recommend changing the logo to emphasize Summit Dental, the words in the domain name; or buying the sds.com domain if the owner would sell it reasonably, then making sds.com an alternate address for the site. (At least sds.com isn’t one of Summit’s competitors.)

I hope these thoughts are useful.

— Steve Freedkin
http://your-attention-please.com

In this message:

• A Few Tips for Internet Security
• Polishing Up Your Web Presence in 2015

Greetings of the season!

I hope you’re having a great time with your loved ones.

During this holiday season, while most people are enjoying time off of work, perhaps travel, and in many cases shopping, a few people are extra busy — including criminals bent on credit-card and identity theft.


Be Safe Online

This is a good time to review a few tips to improve the security of our critical data.

1. Use secure passwords for your online accounts. Avoid passwords that consist of a combination of words and numbers that could be guessed. Your middle name, former street address, and mother’s birthday are not hard to find; a hacker who gets into your e-mail account (Yahoo and some other “freemail” accounts are particularly insecure), for example, might find those pieces of information within your past correspondence, then be able to get into your bank account by trying various combinations of those numbers and words (using software that can try thousands of guesses per second). One way to create a secure but memorable password is to think of a phrase that’s not very common (my friend Joe lives in Idaho), then combine the initials of those words along with a couple of numbers and symbols (m#1fJliI). Not guessable, yet you can remember it.
2. Don’t use the same password for different accounts, or passwords that differ by a guessable pattern (like dogFB for Facebook, dogTW for Twitter). This should apply even to “unimportant” accounts, such as a Yahoo mail account you use only for list subscriptions. You aren’t the only one at risk: People who break into those accounts can use them to launch cyber-attacks on others, as happened recently to the host of several Web sites I manage.
3. If you keep a list of passwords in a master document, make sure that document is strongly encrypted with a secure password (not guessable, contains numbers and symbols/spaces as well as letters, and is longer than 10 characters). You need remember only that one password; all your other passwords will be within that document. File-encryption programs are available for Mac ($6) and Windows or Mac ($30). It is also possible to put your data in an Excel or Word file and protect that document with a strong password, which also encrypts it; however, there are programs that claim they can break that security, which I will be testing soon.
4. Encrypt the file even if it’s only on your computer, though you should have an offsite backup securely stored somewhere: Last weekend my partner’s office suite was broken into by thieves who smashed through a wall to get in(!), and a computer was stolen. You don’t want thieves accessing your list of passwords, nor leaving you without your passwords. Keep that document always encrypted; after you open it, if it doesn’t automatically encrypt on closing, make sure to encrypt it manually, delete the unencrypted version, and empty the trash. (Ideally, empty the trash securely: See instructions for Mac and Windows.)

One of the services I offer clients is to review and tighten up their online security. Let me know if this is of interest to you.


Looking Ahead To 2015

I look forward to helping clients (including you?) create greater success in 2015 by improving their online presence.
For new clients (people who have not previously hired me for work), my rate will be increasing a little more than 7% in 2015. Existing clients will continue to benefit from my 2014 rate for at least the first half of the year.

If you haven’t worked with me yet but are considering doing so, you can lock in the 2014 rate even though we’ll be working together in the near year. Here’s how:

1. Let me know by December 31 that you’d like to work with me, and what work you’d like done.
2. I will get you an estimate as soon as I can (certainly by Jan. 20 if we can sketch out the project[s] by Jan. 7).
3. If you accept the proposal by Jan. 31, I will perform that work at the old rate.

So, if you have some down time before the start of the year, a good way to use it will be to review your online needs — giving you a jump-start on building your success in 2015 (as well as enabling you to lock in my services at the old rate).

Have a great remainder of 2014, and I wish you all the best for the new year!

— Steve