There are a lot of cleverly named websites floating around in cyberspace and some of them even attract attention. That is they attract attention once someone hears about it, but not necessarily the attention of search engines. It’s OK to name your site after the industry in which you function, but the site shuold at least offer a hint to search engines as well as to human internet users as to the type of business you are in.
A couple of areas of your website are more important to search engine spiders such as the title, textual content and the overall body of the article. If you sell used cars for example and your site name is something like Bill’s Get Around search engines, as well as people may have trouble understanding what it is you do. This may be a clever name for a used car lot for sure, but not for attracting attention.
When you hand out business cards, yes, you will have to do some of the old fashioned type of marketing at least until your visitor flow pays the rent, you don’t want to have to explain what it is you do. Your business cards are like billboards along the highway. The less said the more likely people you give them to will read them. Complicated and overly clever billboards are not completely read as people are not going to take their eyes off the road to read the fine print at the bottom. Likewise, if the landing page of your websites tries to be overly explanatory, search engines and visitors may simply not care.
Clever names may also hint at what you represent, but possibly only to you. For example a business named Thyme and Again may make people think of spices when you are selling used watches and wanted to play on time in the name. Search engines may see it in a similar fashion. They see the term thyme and think spices and when all they see on your site is watches, they probably won’t include you in their listing. If you do get listed, will visitors be looking for old clocks or spices? You’ll only find out based on how many leave before getting past the landing page.
If you are still having trouble finding an appropriate name for your online business, enter your site’s purpose into a search engine and see what pops up based on your keywords. While you can not simply use another site’s name…that would be illegal…you can see how they developed the name for their business. You will also see many examples of how the name has nothing to do with what they sell or do, which could help you find the best name possible for your new online business.
However, if the site is listed on the first or second page of the results, take a look around to see what they are doing right. You will see if their search results were organic or paid for, and decide what may be right for you.