In Choosing a Perfect Blog Name, Chris Garrett offers some terrific wisdom about a domain name’s ideal characteristics:

1. Readable
2. Pronounceable
3. Spellable
4. Memorable
5. Concise
6. Unique

What if you’ve already got a well-established domain name that isn’t all that it can be, yet don’t want to lose the traffic that knows of your old business name’s URL? Or you’ve purchased alternate domain names that you don’t use as websites but want to point to your primary domain?

Fear not. Here are two web strategies to the rescue:

• Domain forwarding is the redirection of one domain name to another domain name. A person typing in www.ConstructionMediation.com, for example, is seamlessly taken to www.ConflictResolution.com. Domain forwarding is inexpensive ($4-$8 per year). You would use domain forwarding if you have a primary site and have purchased related alternate domain names (with no websites operational on them) that you want to point to your primary site.
• Domain mapping is the process of re-mapping your entire site using a new name, so that the URLs of all your web pages will now direct a visitor to the new page with the new address. For example, if you have a blog hosted by Typepad, your domain name will be www.OldBlogName.typepad.com. Let’s say that your original blog site has 50 articles and a number of regular web pages. You certainly wouldn’t want to forward the old domain to your shiny new domain, because that would prevent people using your new domain from seeing any of the material on your original blog. Through domain mapping, a visitor to your site could find your “Mediation FAQs” page by using either www.OldBlogName.typepad.com/faqs/ or www.ShinyNewBlog.com/faqs/.

This closes out my short series on domain naming for mediators. If you haven’t been with us since the start, the first post was Naming Your Domain: Make It Easier for Clients to Find You Online. If I can ever be of assistance as you apply what’s been discussed here, I welcome your exploratory call.

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MakingMediationYourDayJob.Lenski.com.