• aimClear Blog , Tuesday, September 23, 2008 1:45 PM

Marty Weintraub explains why entrepreneurs should think long and hard about the search pros and cons before they come up with a company name. Using the example of a Minnesota-based company called "Masters Recording Institute," Weintraub shows that it can be difficult to gain organic traction and costly to gain sponsored search visibility with highly common keywords or initials in a company name.

"To start: everybody loves initials. From our experience, a good percentage of future direct brand searches could occur on the initials 'MRI,'" he says. "Sadly, searches for 'MRI' result in harvesting all sorts of information about 'magnetic resonance imaging,' which is useless in this context. Needless to say, ranking on the average search engine results page (SERP) for the keyword MRI might take a team of link-building-specialists months--and perhaps cost quite a bit."

Meanwhile, for paid search, "the keyword 'MRI' could cost our friends a veritable fortune to defend over time because the commercial landscape is so contested," Weintraub says. There's even a conflict when it comes to local search, as entering "Minnesota MRI" would likely turn up doctor's offices and even massive content sites like WebMD. He goes on to offer some "must read" tips to consider before choosing a company name, starting with a search to see what comes up.

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