Just about every week I'll hear a variant of the following phrase float into my office from the shared hallway:

"... and if you're not getting enough traffic to your website then we can sell you our search engine optimization package. It's only $1500 for the first six months!"

...and just about every week I cringe.

Why am I bringing this up on a blog about naming? Because another naming blogger spoke about it first!

I agree with many of the points Tauno makes about the importance of links and key words - but disagree that this should potentially drive a business to create a SEO-friendly name. (And there-in lies the sum total of today's minor controversy.)

The problem with naming a website or company with SEO in mind is that humans aren't SEO-readers. So a website called search-engine-optimization.com may be easy to parse when reading, but non-intuitive for humans to remember. We know the web as a place where spaces are removed, not a place where spaces are turned into hyphens. (In fact, in an informal workplace poll most in our office assumed that sites with multiple hyphens were link farms or splogs.)

Stokefire has been a good name for us, but certainly wins us no awards for SEO naming. It would be a rare day that someone went to Google and typed anything close to "My company needs a name to stoke the fire and get us moving again." ...and even if they did I'm not sure they'd find us.

Other than putting keywords in our headers we haven't done much with SEO - and yet more than 50 percent of our traffic is from search engines.

So, why do we get so many hits?

Two words: This Blog.

Having an active blog on which you talk about your area of expertise seems to have a far greater impact on search engine placement than any domain name model or SEO trick ever could. For the $3000 that SEO costs (at least from the local folks here) you could be paying for the approximately four or five hours a week that a solid blog demands.

But blogs do more than just save money - they prove competence, give you the abilty to talk with your prospects, and even (dare I say it) give you fodder for the inevitable book you've always wanted to write.

I have many clients that ask about buying SEO, and I've always told them not to bother. Those that had already purchased it weren't particularly happy with the results because even if it brought additional traffic there was nothing on the website that actually engaged the visitor. Driving traffic to a brochureware site or a static page is futile. People visit, see that you're boring and leave...

If you have a great website with active content then you don't need SEO. If you have a blog and can write well you'll not only attract visitors - you'll keep 'em coming back.

But back to naming for the web... You can find hundreds of resources for naming your website online. Many have conflicting information. Here are a few thoughts from us...:

1. First, try to use your name. If at all possible you want to bring the vehicle that you have spent all of your time and money to build into a solid brand online as-is. If you can't use your brand online then you'll have to spend even more time and money to build a second brand.
2. Keep it short. The more letters you use the more chances your prospects have to mistype. There's a good reason why we didn't use stokefireconsultinggroup.com.
3. Spell it rite. When the only way to reach you is through a keyboard it makes sense that you'd choose words that are easy to spell - and spelled correctly. Some new naming trends have made dropping the penultimate letter somewhat intuitive (as in Flickr) but other techniques - like vague phonetic matches ala Tabblo - end up sending traffic to the wrong sites.
4. Remeber that on the web you can have more than one front door. Okay, so your own name is taken on the web. Why not use your tagline, a business descriptor, or add a few letters (like "inc" or "llc") to your name? The cost involved in grabbing a few (or more) alternate domain names that point to your site is minimal. Does this dilute the brand? Not really - since the domain name and the name of the company don't need to match. Put in the description of any household product (www.soap.com) and you'll usually find that it leads you to a company with a different name.
5. Check with www.USPTO.gov (or other authority.) Wouldn't it suck to build a website, advertise the heck out of it, and then find out that someone else has a right to tell you that the name and site you've been advertising belongs to them? Well, it can happen.
6. If you expect people to type your name then use ".COM" especially if you're a business. DotCom sells itself - other extensions are the opposite - you spend as much time communicating the extension as you do your own name. (.net, .tv, .mobi, etc...)
7. Name it like you would a company. If you haven't named your company and the new site is going to represent your enterprise then go find a book on naming or talk to a nomenclature consultant. Many of the rules that apply to the naming of companies can also apply to websites - and if the website is the company then almost all of the rules apply.

Please don't use this stream-of-consciousness, knee-jerk, pretty-much incomprehensible post as the only resource for naming your site - or even as the only reason not to invest in SEO. My point with today's ramble is that there are probably better ways to increase your fame (and traffic) than paying someone to help people find you.

Maybe you should be focusing on whether or not you and your brand are worth finding...

Tate Linden Principal Consultant Stokefire Consulting Group 703-778-9925