How To Name Your Company

Naming your business is probably one of the most important things you can do for your business as this is something that you are going to stick with almost forever, so you want to make sure you name your company something that is going to last.

One of the best strategies you can use is to take out a notepad and start writing down random words and name ideas that you already have floating around on your mind, just have them all on paper. Write down words that relate to your business, products or services. Take a day off and refer back to this list and go over each word, if you have more ideas add to it but chances are by looking at these words you’ll be able to come up with a new words just by combining some of the keywords you already included in your list or by going over your existing list, you might get an idea for a new word. Other naming strategies will involve taking 2 words and combining them together to form a new word, for example, Verizon is a combination of two words merged together.

The famous YouTube channel Valuetainment is a combination of two words.

Choose A Name That Is No More Than 2 Words

Now it's hard to give you advice on how to actually come up with a name but I can definitely give you advice on some things you should be on the lookout for so that you can make the best decision possible.

First things first, you want to have your name no more than2 words or less. Don’t be one of those companies that have these long names for example “kitchen cabinets and home renovations .com” you definitely don’t want something like that as your name

You want something unique so that when people do Google your name, only your website pops on.

Choose A Name That Is Easy To Pronounce

Next is you want something that can be easily pronounce able so when people do end up on your website, the following day when they go back to Google to search your brand name they don’t by accident end up on the wrong website simply because they don’t know the correct spelling of your company name. never go with a name that has multiple spellings because you have to buy all the domains and you run the risk of having your clients end up on the wrong website.

Search On Google To See If Anyone Is Using The Name You Are Planning To Use.

Before you decide on which name to go for your new business, do a quick Google search and see any websites currently show up at the top of Google search, if there are already companies with the same name as the one you were thinking of having, Id avoid using that name entirely simply because if there are multiple websites that have the same name, Google can only rank 1 website at the top and typically the older website that has been using the name the longest will end up dominating the top section of Google.

Don't Tell Anyone What You Are Going To Name Your Business

The next most important tip is while your at the early stages of your business make sure you don’t announce the name you are planning to use for your business to your friends or family members or worse, on social media because there might be people around you that might go on GoDaddy or any other domain website and buy the name that you were thinking of buying. So keep it to yourself until you get it officially registered and you’ve already secured the domains and social media accounts. Then tell anyone you want about your new business name.

Use An Abstract Name If Possible

If you plan on building a brand that will one day end up in multiple industries, choose a name that doesn't actually relate to any one specific industry and go for a broad name that can apply to any kind of business you decide to expand into. For example, the company tesla use to be called Tesla Motors but now they are in the solar business, they are in manufacturing they will soon have their own charging station stores and they also have their own battery business. So they changed their domain from tesla motors to just tesla to make it easier for everyone to remember. Apple use to be called apple computers but now they are just called apple.

Does It Sound Good On The Phone

If you are in business chances are you are going to be making a lot of calls and when you or your staff members introduce yourselves over the phone you want to make sure you have a name that they can be proud to say so do a phone test and see if the name you are thinking to use actually sounds good over the phone for example … Hello, this is John calling from Nordello, how are you doing today?

Use Brand Bucket To Brainstorm Ideas

If you go on Google and type in brand bucket you will come across a website that basically allows you to browse by industry all the different names that are available for sale in every single type of niche with the logos already designed and their corresponding domain names available as part of the package you can choose to buy an already existing brand name or you can simply use this as a brainstorming tool for new name ideas.

Use Name Chek

This website is amazing because any name idea that you have you can just type it into this tool and it will check and see if the domain is available and if the matching social media profile names are available as well for example Instagram, YouTube Facebook etc

Make Sure The .com and .ca Is Available For Your Domain

The reason you want to make sure that your business name is available in both the .ca and .com is that once your website is launched and you only have the .ca version of the domain. If later on another company starts off with the same name as yours and they register the .com version, chances are your websites are going to compete with each other on the first page of Google because Google won't be able to distinguish which website is the true option for that specific term. So to avoid this in the future make sure you have both domains variations if you do business in the US & Canada.

Don’t Use Exact Match Domains As Your Business Name

Let’s say you just started a flower shop store in Toronto, don’t go and register the name flower shop toronto.com thinking that you are going to get a ton of visitors to your site simply because your website is the name of high traffic keywords on Google. This strategy did in fact work to some degree several years ago but now if you choose an exact match domain your website is going to have a very hard time ranking for your own search term.