It happens A LOT! A company is getting ready to launch a new product and spends a good deal of time researching the "name" of the product to be clear of trademarks, something flashy so it is remembered and relevant but then fails to purchase the exact match name of the product as a domain name!

Why is this important?

Keywords

The product name becomes vital keywords so people can find it! The same reason you gave the product a name in the first place, so anybody can reference the exact product and be able to find it! You also have the aspects of brand protection to worry about.

So why is it important to own the exact match domain name of this product? A couple reasons really. With the age of the internet, many people will look to the web to make the purchase or use the web to gain more data on the product. When somebody wants to do this, they use keywords to find it. What keywords? The majority of the time, it will be the products name. The products name, becomes the important keywords.

Keywords are how the internet works! Search engines like Google work based on the phrase somebody types into a search box. In internet terms, that phrase becomes keywords. Google in return tries to return results based on those keywords to be relevant to what the searcher is looking for. This is where having a web site, using the exact match domain name can greatly help you. Google looks at the domain name of your web site and the "keywords" used on the site to return results to the searchers keywords. The more a specific keyword set is used and likely the main focus on the site, Google will likely return that result higher on the search results page.

That is why it is important to be one of the 10 listings on the first page of results for the keyword search. The higher your site is listed, the more likely you will get the visitor to click into your site. The very first listing is the best and also likely will get the majority of the clicks in.

One main thing that helps Google, is to look for the exact match domain name to the keyword search!

So that covers why owning the exact match domain name can help with search engines to return your site / product to the people looking for it but what happens if the person skips the "search" portion and simply visits the exact match name of the product and adds .com to it? This is called Direct Navigation. Not owning the exact match name of your product leaves you ZERO control of the direct navigation aspects if you do not own the domain name and you will lose those customers and may not get them back. It is believed that 1 in 6 people will use direct navigation instead of a search engine when they know what they are looking for.

If your customer knows the name of your product, they hold a 1 in 6 chance of visiting "the name" of your product and adding .com to in their address bar.

Owning the exact match domain name to your product not only is smart business and makes sense to you, it will make sense to your customers when you put the exact match domain name on the products packaging, in advertisements etc. People want to find something NOW! Giving them an exact matching web address to access it anytime, day or night via a web site is becoming second nature with your customers expecting it. Not owning the exact match domain will and can easily confuse your customer and not allow them to find you. Forcing the customer to use a search engine to find your product is like throwing meat into a pack of wolfs. Your competition gets a lot stronger on search engines because it is very likely your product is not one of a kind and other businesses want to earn the business of the searcher and will be fighting to out rank your site.

If somebody happens to already own the exact match domain name you need, contact them and buy it! If the domain name is available (to purchase directly at a domain name registrar like GoDaddy.com) buy it! Some pre-owned domain names sell for millions of dollars (mostly because of the keywords in it, some because of existing traffic, branding potential etc) but most sell for under $5,000. It may seem like a lot, until you fully understand how important it is that your customers are able to find you!

Yes, owning the exact match domain name to the "name" of your company is important but the fact is that people will be looking for and remembering your Product Name and likely not your company name. When they are "searching" for this specific product, they search for the product name and not always know or care about your company name.