Choose the Right Name for your Business

Choosing the right name for your business is as critical as starting your business itself. A well-researched name brings the right people to you while a poorly planned name can get lost among the millions of others out there.

This is by far the most important thing about starting your own business or blog! Your name is your identity to your customer and on the internet. It’s what tells people about your business. Ask yourself...

• What do I want people to think when they say my business name?
• Does my business name tell people what it is about?
  For example
  • Product-driven name - I used to have Veena's Art of Cakes as my business name. Which obviously told people that I was in the business of cakes. Even when you googled cakes in Israel you got my website because the name itself had cakes in it.
  • Brand Name - Later I decided I wanted to change my business name to – Veena Azmanov but does it tell people what my business is about? No!!
• When I started my blog, my business name became my brand name. This means I keep Veena Azmanov but I have to work indirectly to tell people my blog is about food and cake.

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Choosing your business name is also a good time to think about your domain name too. Do them simultaneously.

I say this from personal experience. Because I did not do it right when I just started. I choose Veena’s Art of Cakes which was an amazing business name but the domain itself had to be veenaartofcakes.com or veenasartofcakes.com.

Often people do not know if they should search my name with or without the ‘s’ after veena. See my point? If you become a big business these are the little things that competitors can take advantage of!

There are a few things you need to consider when choosing a name. Here are a few tips from me when you choose your own domain.

1. Be honest and analyze your own name.
   Decide whether is it easy for people to pronounce your name. Nothing is worst than people pronouncing your name right?
   Do you think that it's catchy or is it something that will be hard for people to remember? Is it something you want people to call your business?
2. Align your brand with your domain. Search the internet to see that no one else has the same name as yours.
   For example, five years ago - I choose Veena’s Art of cakes but I wanted Art of Cakes. Makes it more personal to me. But the truth is that the name Art of cakes was not available.
3. Keep the name short, and easy and if possible try to use keywords – keep it simple.
   Long and complicated names are difficult for people to remember and for google to search. If your domain has a keyword in it, that’s a big plus!
4. Don’t use hyphens or numbers in your name – because these stop words that are not recognized by internet language. Like apostrophes in Veena's is not great in a business name.
5. Always use dot.com for your business. – Search the web and if you see the dot.com of your business is not available – try looking for something else. It's the most widely searched method.
6. If you find the domain you want – secure it. Protect your brand.
   Why?
   Here's a little story for you - I started my food blog "A homemade chef" on blogspot. While I never realized it was growing big and popular someone else did!
   All of a sudden I started getting emails asking me if I would like to buy ahomemadechef.com for $500
   Yes! There are many people who secure available popular domains for just 0.99 cents and then re-sell them at hiked-up prices. So then I had to choose ahomemadechef.net instead of dot.com. But it’s not my business so I didn’t give it much thought and I definitely did not want to spend $500 dollars on it.

Choosing your business name is a good time to think about your domain name too!

Finding a domain is not as difficult as you think anymore. In fact, if you create a website many hosting companies throw in one domain FREE when you sign up.

So my take for you from this post is to really think of what you want your business name to be. Pay more attention to both the name and domain at the same time. It will save you a lot of headaches later.

Starting your own website or blog is not as difficult as you think. Here is my free tutorial on how to start a blog. I moved my blog with this hosting company many many years ago and have been so happy that I hope you join them too.

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