The right name will boost exposure and attract new leads, says Tim Kitchen from Job Done Websites.

In our work with over 100 UK plumbers and other tradesmen, there is one mistake we see made time and time again. It’s so fundamental that many don’t give it a second’s thought, and yet it can make the difference between a highly visible website that generates lots of leads, and a website that no one will ever find.

It’s important, however, to understand what your customers will be searching for, and make sure you’re showing up for these searches.

If ABC Plumbing Services is based in Rugeley for example, the most relevant searches for them to target are types of Google searches people are most likely to make are variations on ‘Plumbers in Rugeley’.

So what better name for a website than Plumber Rugeley, using the domain name www.plumberrugeley.co.uk? This matches exactly what people are searching for, and so it’s more likely to show up when people in Rugeley search for a plumber!

In fact you’ll see this website at the top of Google for one of our clients, Chris Ward. Chris’s company is actually called Chris Ward Plumbing and Heating, but unless someone searches for that name, a website called something like chriswardplumbingandheating.com is at a huge disadvantage against sites with more targeted domain names.

Have no fear! There are a number of variations that can be used.

Let’s say you’re in my home city of Bristol, an incredibly competitive city for plumbers so the most common website names are already taken. You now have two options:

So the plumberbs8.com website is more likely to attract clicks when it shows up in search results because people know exactly what they’re getting. More clicks = more customers, simple!

The good news is that you can use a domain like abcplumbingservices.com to forward to your new targeted plumberbs8.com website, allowing you to use this address on your stationary.

If you’re interested to see how to use a good website name as part of a complete strategy to attract more customers from the Internet, as well as see some real life case studies, I’d encourage you to check out our DVD “A Plumbing and Heating Engineer’s Guide to Getting Work from the Internet”.

Heating Ventilation and Plumbing readers can claim a completely FREE copy by texting HVP DVD plus your name and address to 07912 303876.