Now many foreign trade people know the importance of foreign trade website marketing. In our daily work, we have seen many foreign trade people and foreign trade companies choose some very bad website domain names, which is really unbearable.
This article will give you a brief introduction on how to choose a good domain name for a foreign trade website. I hope that those foreign trade people who really want to do a good job in foreign trade can see this article and take it seriously when choosing a domain name.
Having been in the foreign trade industry for so many years, I have visited thousands of foreign company websites and domestic foreign trade enterprise websites, if not tens of thousands, so I have some experience in domain names for corporate websites. If you want to build a corporate English website, it is very important to choose a good domain name. A good domain name is not only conducive to obtaining more traffic and clicks, but also easier to promote and be remembered. More importantly, as your website traffic increases, the brand effect of your domain name will gradually emerge.
Okay, let’s talk about how to choose a good domain name for a foreign trade English website . Please follow the following principles (I have roughly ranked them in order of importance):
1. The older the domain name, the better
The length of domain name registration time is also one of the many factors that affect rankings. The two main indicators of foreign trade SEO rankings are trust and relevance. The longer the domain name, the more beneficial it is to the website ranking. A longer registration time is conducive to the accumulation and improvement of DA (Domain Authority).
After all, if you don’t have time to operate your website for a long time, how can you expect foreign trade search engines to trust your website for a long time?
At the same time, generally speaking, the older the domain name, the more natural visits from real old customers will be, so there is no need to tell old customers the new domain name again to prevent the loss of old customers.
Tips: If your old domain name was used to sell candies 8 years ago, or mobile phones 5 years ago, and you are planning to sell hardware on your new website, don’t use it.
2. The domain name is easy to remember
One of the characteristics of a good domain name is that it is easy to remember.
• zjxjwplasticproducts.com
• szbjgcasting.com
• cngdfittings.com
Don’t use domain names like “Pinyin” or “Pinyin abbreviations” in the domain names of corporate English websites. Don’t use Pinyin and words interchangeably. If you want to be remembered among many websites, the first thing to do is:
Just one look at your domain name will imprint it in people’s minds, making it never forgotten.
I don’t want to know so much! Contact Mr. Foreign Trade now
3. The shorter the domain name, the better
Generally, we recommend that the shorter the better, usually 3-4 words (because 1-2 words may have been registered long ago). Of course, this principle is based on the previous principle, and it is not just about pursuing shortness. A short and memorable domain name must be an important alternative domain name!
For example, this domain name cncledmanufacturing.com can be simplified to: ledmfg.com
It is true. If you think about it, there are still opportunities for many good domain names. Customers will never forget domain names like this. Some people may ask if abbreviations are OK? Yes, why not? When I searched for customers, I saw that many potential customers’ website domain names had mfg in them, and they also emphasized on their websites that products were made in the USA.
Americans can use it, so can we. Moreover, mfg = manufacturing, which is almost the same as Peking University = Peking University in the Chinese mindset!
For example, Mr. Foreign Trade was also troubled when choosing a domain name. We had many options for reference at that time.
o Mrforeigntrade.com
o Waimaoxiansheng.com
For example, these two domain names are relatively long and it is easy to make mistakes when entering them. Later, we simplified them to: globalsir.com
4. It is best not to use a “middle dash” in the domain name
To put it simply, don’t use domain names with a middle horizontal line, such as www.abc-dd.com or even www.abc–def–ghijk.com. Typical examples include: www.made-in-china.com, which has lost a lot of traffic to madeinchina.com.
I have seen many foreign trade people register similar domain names for their websites:
o xx-xx-xx.com
o chinese-xxx-xxxx.com
o xxx-xxx.com
Indeed, many people find that many easy-to-remember short domain names have been registered when registering domain names, so they try to add a hyphen, thinking that this seems to solve the problem.
In fact, this kind of domain name is the worst. It is better to try other ideas than to use a horizontal line.
Next, let me explain why it is not recommended to use a domain name with a “middle horizontal line” structure:
1) Traffic is easily stolen
The traffic of a domain name like abcd-efg.com can easily be taken away by a website with a domain name without the – symbol, which means it is easy for someone to take advantage of it. When a customer wants to visit your website one day, he may forget to enter the middle dash when typing in the browser bar, and your traffic will be contributed to someone else’s website. Of course, this is only a small part of your traffic loss, which is not too large, but it is still not negligible.
In fact, a larger part of the loss is in the search results page of foreign trade search engines. You work hard to optimize and promote, but as long as customers search for keywords in your domain name, they will immediately appear on the same result page as your similar competitor website abcdefg.com, which will cause temporary trouble to your potential visitors. They may even think that the website without a horizontal line is the official website. At this time, some traffic will definitely be directed to the competitor’s website. If the competitor does better than you, then this may be a wedding dress for others.
2) Difficulty in expression
When you call a foreign client, a colleague from the other company tells you that the person you are looking for is not in the company these days. You leave your email address and will tell him when you come back. At this time, can you accurately express your email address? Compare [email protected] and [email protected], which one is easier to express?
• How would you describe the dash? Would you say hyphen or dash?
• Can the other party understand what you are saying?
• What if the other party is not a native English speaker or is not particularly good at English?
Few people would tell you that a simple website domain name could cause so much trouble to your sales work.
If you have already registered such a domain name, it may not be easy to change it for the time being. Perhaps you have already linked your corporate email address and have already contacted many customers with this email address (if you only have a small number of customers, I still recommend changing the domain name as soon as possible. It may be more troublesome in the short term, but in the long run, it is still worth it).
So when you tell someone your email address, how do you say the middle dash? The answer is: try to use hyphen. If you don’t understand, just say middle dash.
If you use dash directly, others will not be able to figure out whether it is middle dash or bottom dash?
I don’t want to know so much! Contact Mr. Foreign Trade now
5. Only use the .com international top-level domain name for English, and never try non-mainstream personalized domain name suffixes (including .cn .com.cn). Minority languages can use local domain names
reason:
• 99% of the most valuable websites in the world have .com suffix
• .com is the most popular suffix type and is also the safest choice
• If a commercial/enterprise website uses .org .net .cc .xyz .company, it always feels like a copycat.
• Another example, if the domain name of a shopping website Taobao is taobao.cn, or taobao.xyz, my god…
6. The pronunciation is simple, readable and easy to understand
This one can actually be discussed together with the second one. Why should we also consider the pronunciation? Some website domain names are difficult to pronounce, so they are also difficult to remember.
In the same way, why don’t we use numbers in our domain names? On the one hand, numbers make your website look less formal and harder to remember. On the other hand, they are not conducive to pronunciation. The longer the number, the more syllables it takes to pronounce.
How do you understand readable?
For example, if you are engaged in inkjet printer business, and you insist on naming your domain name niceinkpt.com, which English dictionary has verified your abbreviation? How can others see that inkpt = inkjet printer? How can others read it?
For example, if someone asks you, what is your website domain name? You could easily say printbetter dot com, but you can only say nice “i” “n” “k” “p” “t”. How miserable is that?
Domain names that are difficult to pronounce and poorly readable are also not easy to remember!
7. Most plural forms are better
Many people can’t help but use product name keywords as domain names. So is it better to use singular or plural?
People who frequently search on foreign trade search engines should know that for the same product word, the plural form is more searched than the singular form. In addition, when searching on foreign trade search engines with plural words , 90% of the search results are plural, and singular words are less and not ranked very high (observed when 100 results are displayed per page). When searching on foreign trade search engines with singular words, there are quite a few plural forms in the search results, and they also have a better ranking.
So my suggestion is that plural is better, except for some products or industries where the singular is more likely to be used than the plural.
8. Should the domain name include keywords? Should the domain name include the brand?
This may be the biggest problem in domain name selection. Choosing domain names based on keywords and choosing domain names based on brands are two different approaches.
1) Select domain names based on keywords
Many articles related to Google SEO have said that you can incorporate your product keywords into your domain name, which is good for ranking because your URL will have keywords in it. However, to date, this effect is limited. The main benefit of this choice is to let users know your main business when they search for you or when you send the URL.
The feeling that foreign trade search engines give me is: a woman, a fickle woman. The algorithms of foreign trade search engines are updated many times every year, and sometimes they may make some adjustments and updates every month. In the past, foreign trade search engines did pay some attention to the factors of keywords in the domain name, but excessive SEO has caused foreign trade search engines to reduce the weight of these aspects a lot. Foreign trade search engines would rather you put more energy on the content of the website and optimize it for users. Does that mean that you don’t need to consider keywords when choosing a domain name?
Not really. At least including keywords in the domain name can clearly let potential visitors know what your website is about. And many times we may need to show the product category or industry in the domain name, right?
2) Choose a domain name based on branding
Foreign trade search engines are now paying more and more attention to brand and uniqueness. Even if your domain name does not indicate what your website is about, as long as you update it over a long period of time, cater to visitors, and provide valuable information and services, brand-oriented domain sites can still get high rankings, such as gree.com, haier.com, and dji.com. What needs to be considered is: Is your product worth building a brand? Do you have a strategic vision to make your corporate brand bigger and stronger? Do you have a dedicated brand operation team to operate the brand?
For example, a factory that makes sanitary products may not have much influence in the industry in China, and the boss may not be very capable and has no vision and concept of international marketing. It is obviously worthless to talk to you about its domestic brand. It is just like I often hear some foreign trade people say things like corporate English official website. I wonder why some people talk about official website all day long. How big is your company? How famous is your brand?
Domestic brands usually don’t have much influence. After you become big, you may find that your domestic brand is not conducive to international market promotion and dissemination. You may register your brand abroad, and you may find that your domain name is too long, which makes it difficult to promote it on SNS and other platforms. At this time, you may need to consider whether to imitate those big brand websites and cut off all English letters except the brand name, leaving only the brand name. Obviously, this requires courage.
For example, Apple, Haier, and DJI. Take DJI for example, why does it use dji.com instead of djidrones.com? Obviously, on the one hand, they put users first and do not rely too much on SEO. On the other hand, these brands have professional international marketing teams to continuously increase the brand value. At this stage of brand development, they almost don’t need to consider Google SEO too much .
Most brand words rely on retail platforms to promote the brand, and various SNS platforms to assist in promotion. Therefore, if your product is more B2B, your usual promotion is not suitable for these channels, and your company’s strength in all aspects is not very strong, then I think you can put your brand dream aside for now.
3) Virtual brand + product name
This is a very common way of naming domain names. For example, someone who makes bathtubs (bathtubes) created a virtual brand called Sebrantek. He planned to use a domain name like sebrantek-bathtube.com. It has a hyphen, which is too bad.
If it were me, I would probably use a domain like webathtube.com mybathtube.com! (Still unregistered)
Summarize:
In the end, I don’t think there is any good or bad choice. It depends on how important the website is to you, and how much time, energy, and money you are willing to spend on your website. Your financial strength, your company’s overall strength, development plan, development stage, etc.
9. Avoid spelling mistakes
When registering a domain name, some people do not pay attention to spelling and register it incorrectly. It is also possible that a certain word is often misspelled by users, and then they register it. This is not recommended.
Because of this mistake, some qualified customers will suspect that your website is a spam website or a fake website.
If there is no basic trust, how can we talk about the subsequent inquiry conversion and order conversion?
I don’t want to know so much! Contact Mr. Foreign Trade now
10. Try not to be similar to existing brands or trademarks
Some companies try to skirt the rules by registering domain names related to well-known brands and trademarks, which may be effective in the short term, but they may soon be complained by the brand or users, which will cause the domain name to be suspended and even lead to the risk of legal action.
11. Check regularly for better domain name registration opportunities
Or to put it more bluntly: registration opportunities for your product category words or direct product words!
For example, if I can get the domain name disposableclothing.com, I will definitely wait during the redemption period and register it as soon as the domain name is released. In 90% of the security protection product websites, my products are basically accurately positioned in this category word.
Although I mentioned the domain name selection rule “the shorter the domain name, the better” before, this word is directly the category word of the product I make. If I get it, it will be a living business card! Any potential customer will remember this domain name! So this is when there is a great opportunity, these domain name selection rules can be put aside. I can use two domain names for my website, and redirect the less good domain name but the domain name that is already in use to a better new domain name through 301 redirect. In reality, this is what I do.
I’ve had some terrible domain names before, but I figured it out in time and redirected traffic to new domains with 301 redirects. You can do the same, too. Why not?
Finally, let’s summarize:
Most of the foreign trade people who are reading this article are:
• Traditional B2B
• The products are labor-intensive and highly homogenized, making it difficult to stand out and even more difficult to build a brand internationally
• Start-ups focus on sales and do not have enough resources and funds to invest in marketing
• Frequently take the initiative to develop customers
• Hope to rely on SEO website traffic to convert inquiries
Therefore, we recommend that when choosing a domain name for a foreign trade company’s website, give priority to using an old domain name that they frequently use, because the email address and domain name need to be consistent.
If registering a new domain name, I prefer the brand + keyword solution. The domain name strategy we usually recommend is usually:
1. ) Brand + product category word
2. ) Prefix + product category word
3. ) Product category word + suffix
4. ) Prefix ++ product category word + suffix (usually not used, will be longer)