Travel North Dakota has launched a new ad campaign and is using the tag line R U Legendary and also is using the domain name RULegendary.com to further its message online.

Branding is important and I understand that but domain names are not license plates and if you use one like a license plate, you better cover your ass with the normal spelling or you WILL lose visitors to the proper spelling domain.

• Travel North Dakota owns the domain name RULegendary.com
• Travel North Dakota does NOT own the domain name AreYouLegendary.com

When launching an ad campaign or any website really, your domain name should pass three tests:

Radio Test

If your domain name is "heard", is it clear and match the "sounds like" term? If not, you may want to reconsider OR cover your ass and own all the sounds like spellings and forward those domains to your main site. R U is going to "sound like" Are You on the radio or via word of mouth.

Memorable

Somebody may see your domain name for a millisecond, are they going to remember it? Your web address is extremely important in many ways and one of the most important is an easy domain name to remember so somebody can visit it! Always capitalize the first letter in each keyword to make your domain name visually appealing as well. ExampleDomain.com is much easier to read than exampledomain.com or www.exampledomains.com! Seeing rulegendary.com is just going to look like random letters on a billboard!

Easy To Spell

People are bad spellers (me included), so the easier your domain name is to spell, the better! Confusing people by sticking a number into your domain or using terms that can be spelled several ways (To, Too, Two, 2) is not a good idea. Even terms like Legendary can be hard to spell, so it isn’t a bad idea to own typos of that as well. Like Ledgendary, as that is what is sounds like.

If you are going to be spending large sums of money on advertising and trying to get your business found, using a license plate style domain name is going to do you little to no good. If you do decide to go that route, cover you ass so you do not lose out on the traffic intended to go to your site and end up on sounds like domain.

To top it off, Travel North Dakota uses the domain name NDTourism.com as another license plate domain, instead of NorthDakotaTourism.com. They do not own the full term domain. Keywords are important on the internet and simply looking at a domain to have an idea of what may be on it is also important.

• NDTourism.com by just looking at it, you would not know what it is.
• NorthDakotaTourism.com by looking at it, you have a pretty good clue what you will find.

RuLegendary.com is the North Dakota site if you wish to check it out.