Naming Your Site

An important part of marketing a web content site is naming the site. As one can learn from ancient mythologies in almost any culture, there can be a great deal of power in the selection of a name.

If you haven’t already picked a name for your website, try to select a name that helps to tell your story. Good names, at least with a .com suffix, are hard to find these days. It’s worth working hard to find the right name.

Note

Since more and more site traffic is derived from search engine queries (or search page advertising), arguably the domain name for a site is less important than it used to be. It’s still a great plus to come up with a memorable and relevant site name.

The Cult of Personality

Life written large with the cult of personality might well describe the times we live in. At the time of this writing, Paris Hilton, an heiress with an apparently vacuous personality, has a television show and is famous because (and not despite) of that vacuous personality. I think the reality is that Paris is a great deal smarter than she seems—although another moral you can certainly draw from the Paris Hilton success story is that sex sells.

My point is that people, particularly celebrities, get attention these days. If you have celebrity, have access to celebrities, or have ideas about how to create celebrity, I say: “Go for it! Milk it!” And don’t forget to mention your website.

It’s reasonable that people should be interested in people. People are interesting. As the poet Alexander Pope said a long time ago, “The proper study of mankind is man.” (If Pope had included both genders, we moderns could surely go along with this.)

It’s really very simple. Getting website traffic requires publicity. Publicity is best generated using stories about people—particularly interesting or notorious people. If your website has an interesting story about people, let others know about it (perhaps using a press release). Your people story will draw traffic.

Ideally, a site name, as I mentioned, should tell or evoke the story of your site and be memorable. Consider these classics:

Amazon

The world’s greatest river meets the world’s largest inventory

eBay

Evokes an Internet port of trade, and perhaps even a new age of discovery

Google

A very big number fits with the very large quantity of information Google indexes