Consultants often overlook the importance a strong online marketing campaign with starts with a good name. A good domain name can play a major part in the success of your web site.
While the most obvious and probably the most common choice for a consultant is to use their own name as their web site's domain, this is often not the best choice. While this may be a good name by which existing clients can remember your site, the key is for your web site to generate new leads and new clients. Domain names like scottbrogan.com will not identify your web site to potential clients searching the web for a consultant with a specific expertise.
It is unlikely that prospects will search for you by name. Instead they will be searching for "Marketing Consultant" or "Operations Consultant New York". Furthermore, once they've visited your site and moved on, it will be much easier for someone looking to find your site again to remember a more unique name.
The best domain names should be descriptive and serve to identify your target market. Ideally it would also contain keywords that potential clients would search by. This simple change will help improve your site's search engine rankings dramatically.
The words "consultant", "expert", or "advisor" can be easily combined with the locations you serve or your field of expertise, creating a domain name that is both descriptive and contains the highly important keywords. Although many of these names may already be taken, by using one or more of the combinations of words you are usually able to find a name works well for your practice.
Another option is to register more than one domain name or even have more than one web site. By having more than one domain name and web site, you can target each smaller community specifically, and establish yourself as the expert in that area. For example, although the main focus on your practice maybe IT Consulting you may also have strong project management skills and you may want to develop another website targeting that option.
Now that you have a good idea of what to look for in a domain name, you will need to find one that is available and register it. If you have a few specific names you're considering, you can go directly to a registrar site such as Networksolutions.com or Registernames.com. If it turns out the ideas you had are already taken, you can try using Nameboy.com. Nameboy.com will automatically suggest available domain names based on the keywords you provide.
