Human beings love to take the path of least resistance. Our tendency to do so is manifested in everything from household chores to getting tasks done at work. Even entrepreneurs looking to start new businesses are prone to the least resistance trap. Take choosing a company name. How many entrepreneurs have taken a popular industry keyword and used it as a business name?
Imagine a fictional entrepreneur named Mary. She is launching a new on-demand delivery business from her Southern California home. The phrase ‘best Los Angeles delivery service’ might be an ideal long tail keyword for SEO purposes, but it would be lousy as a business name.
Why? Try entering the name – as a long tail keyword, mind you – into the business name generator offered by TRUiC. Wait a minute for the generator to come up with some suggestions. Do you know what you’ll discover? Business names that look a lot like the search terms you would use when searching for a delivery service in L.A. But why is this a problem?
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Business Names and Keyword Stuffing
Using ‘Best Los Angeles Delivery Service’ as a business name might seem to make sense based solely on entering a keyword into a search engine. But remember that Mary will be using her business name all over her website and in all her online content. She will also be utilizing it extensively on social media. Right off the bat, ‘best’ is a big no-no for business names.
Here’s the problem: Google and its competitors do not distinguish between business names and keywords. Their algorithms interpret everything entered into a search engine as a keyword. Therefore, an algorithm identifying ‘best Los Angeles delivery service’ plastered all over Mary’s website could very well interpret that as keyword stuffing.
Keyword stuffing is the practice of creating content loaded up with keywords to a point of being excessive. It used to be a tactic web developers utilized to rank well on search engines. But some years ago, Google took a stand against keyword stuffing to stop it.
Today, they continue to punish websites that appear to be stuffed with keywords. Punishments can be anything from reduced rankings to outright bans. None of it is good.
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Avoid Search Engine Misunderstandings
Search engine algorithms are not brains. They are incapable of logical thought. And even with advancements in natural language processing, algorithms still don’t make a distinction between keywords and business names. Therefore, there is plenty of room for misunderstandings between businesses and search engines. Avoid those misunderstandings.
Mary may be intent on utilizing her chosen phrase as a keyword to enhance search engine ranking. That’s fine. She might even decide to use the phrase in a tagline published alongside her company name. But for the name itself, she should avoid using that keyword phrase.
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Being Creative with Business Names
A better option for Mary would be to come up with something a lot more creative than a simple keyword. Perhaps ‘At Your Door’ would make a good name. The phrase ‘best Los Angeles delivery service’ could be incorporated into a tagline. That tagline would still be effective as a search engine keyword, but it would not be used very often in Mary’s online content, thus avoiding the keyword stuffing trap.
Now you know the number one reason for avoiding the temptation of making a business name one of your industry keywords. You absolutely want to compete for the most lucrative keywords in your industry, but you don’t want to do so using your company name. Otherwise, you run the risk of your website being punished because search engine algorithms decide you are guilty keyword stuffing.
