Letter to Dentists and Other Professionals Regarding the Internet

(A dentist who used the Internet correctly gets a patient!
Photo: Yuri Arcurs/BigStockPhoto.com)


Dear Dentists (and Lawyers, and Eye Docs, Veterinarians etc., etc. ),

Could you be busier? Could you fit a few more clients / patients/ cases into your schedule? Read on - it's important.

In addition to being a Domaniac, I am a long time general dentist. My office incorporated in 1976 under the name of Audubon Dental Associates, Ltd. (since it is in Audubon, PA) Everyone knows the office as Audubon Dental, so when I chose a domain name for the office, AudubonDental.com it was!

That turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made and I can prove it: Go to Google.com Search, pretend you are patient in Audubon and you are looking for a dental office. (Maybe you know there is an "Audubon Dental" or maybe you just want a dentist in Audubon). Type "Audubon Dental," into the search bar. You will see about 41,000 results for "Audubon Dental" and what comes up first? You got it: AudubonDental.com

Now, you may also notice that our dental site is not fancy. In fact it is probably the first site I ever made, with a few later improvements. There are much nicer, and larger, and more expensive, websites for other Audubon Dental offices across the country.

Here is the moral of the story: GET YOUR PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE NAME OR DESCRIPTION in your DOT COM (or Net, but Com works better since people remember it), and get the wording as close as you can to what the person looking for you will enter. For some offices, this may be a geographical name, like BeverlyHillsVet.com. For some, it may be the name by which the practice is already known. For some, it will be a specialty or denote what the practice does, e.g., AvianVets.com .

For the life of me, I cannot understand why a dentist using the term GENTLE DENTAL or SMILE DESIGN would not look for a domain name containing those words, why someone using Cambridge Dental would not grab CambridgeDental.com. I mean, really, those phone book ads are a thing of the past, and if prospective clients/patients don't find you, they find the office down the street.

A note here about geographical domains is appropriate: Geographical domains are generally not able to be trademarked. Thus, even though my corporation name is Audubon Dental, any dentist could have used my name on the Internet. This is why it can be vital to get your city or geographical area domain name (for some, the type of practice, or both) and hang onto it! In fact, get as many variations of the domain as you can. I can Imagine how I would have felt if the new guy in town had used Audubon Dental on the Internet. How many of my patients would be in his chair these days?

Here are a couple domains to check for more professional practice hints: ALegalDomain.com (advice applies to all professionals); MyWebEyeDoctor.com (lists some great Eye Doc domains). Both have little explanations from a practicing dentist / domainer (that would be me).

Here are some examples of domains that could improve business for someone: NYCEyeCare.com(New York City Eye Care), BerkeleyPediatric.com (Berkeley Pediatric), CASurgical.com (California/Canada Surgical), DeliveryDocs.com (Delivery Docs), GentleDMD.com (Gentle DMD),UKLawFirm.com (UK Law Firm), TheInjuryOffice.com (The Injury Office), JerseyOrtho.com (Jersey Orthodontics or Orthopaedics), LACosmeticDentist.com (LA / Lousiana Cosmetic Dentist) , 4GentleDental.com (Gentla Dental), LAlawFirms.com (LA Law Firms, The bigger the city, or state, the more valuable the domain), Happy2th.com (for a kid's dentist). You get the idea! Hundreds of these generic business-building domains (that will pay for themselves over and over) can be found at Domain Dakini.

Green Domains: Energy, Water, Environment and Climate Change

What's next in legal domains? Well, definite candidates are energy and water.
Look for the causes of recent trends in world affairs and one thing will become evident: ENERGY. Soon, it will be ENERGY and WATER. Then, ENERGY, and WATER, and CLIMATE CHANGE! These are going to be dealt with whether we like it or not. And they will be litigated.
EnergyLawyers.com, a domain I found and registered about 8 years ago, is for sale at Sedo . 1950 USD will do it.
The term "energy lawyers" produced a mere 18,900,000 results on Google's search engine, but that, alone does not indicate its value. WaterLawsuit.com, WaterLitigation.com and WaterDisputes.com are other great domain names. More about legal domains on A Legal Domain.

For energy and environment and climate domains, a few of the best dot com's are listed at www.domaindakini.com/greendomains.html. These domains are in demand and I have sold more than a few lately. It seems a green domain portfolio is not a bad investment!

Game and Gaming Portfolio is for Sale

GameHit.com is for sale! In fact, I have decided to package 15 fabulous video game and gaming domains into a mini-portfolio offer. They are all dot com's, of course, and none has been developed (The low price reflects this). The offer includes Send me a note if you are seriously interested!

A Video Game Poem:

Gaming away
They love to play.
Glued to the screen
The hours pass by,
And grow into timelessness.
Nothing else matters,
In present awareness.
Flow and attention?
When it is better!

-- Lynne Heckert (avid gamer)

The Lotus Century - Domain Names of Asia

Living in the state-of-the-art airport in South Korea (on my way back to Philadelphia, from Mongolia) gave me plenty of time to think about domain names of Asia. Of Domain Dakini's rather extensive portfolio of dot coms (and, let's face it, the world wants dot com's for prestige, search engine friendliness and memorability) a few hundred are Asian or Asian inspired.

Asia wants Dot Coms. Why? Because Asia is growing very fast and the locus of world commerce ( commerce being epitomized by .com) is shifting eastward. Domains useful for commerce, art, and tech coming from China, South Korea, Singapore, India, and many more countries can be found at Domain Dakini.

Note that the Chinese favorite flower is the lotus (the favorite mythical good luck creatures are the dragon and phoenix). And China uses letters that are not frequently used in English. Consider acronym domains like XUCN.com (or anything with a X,Y,Z, G : just look at a map of China). I have been traveling to Asia for over 25 years, watching as Chinese and other Asian cities have moved into the new century. Perhaps this century will come to be known as The Lotus Century? I don't know, but that could very well happen.

A few winners: ChinaStarts.com, China3000.com, ChinaSkyNet.com, ChinaCarNews.com,
SinoTeam.com, KoreaTractor.com (Korea has four large manufacturers of quality small tractors), KoreaSelect.com and AsianVista.com.

Finally: ChinaMakesIt.com (China does make most things) and LotusCentury.com.

Dakini Domain Domain Names from the Dakini Realm

Greetings and welcome to the Dakini Domain Blog!

First, a little about me: I have been a dentist since the early seventies. In 1983 I also received a law degree, my Law Review article being about informed consent. I have been in the private practice of dentistry for 30 some years and, as an attorney, I have worked in law offices and for a judge. I teach law and ethics, practice management and the like at Penn Dental School as well. Oh yes, I cofounded a meditation center in the western suburbs of Philadelphia and I am a pretty serious meditator.

In the late ninties, I registered a domain name for the meditation center and one for the Dental Office. Well, domainers all have a story and this is mine: I always collected marbles, stamps and Asian art. Domain names are no different. They all have a personality, a place in history, in the zeitgeist of the time.

First it was ten domains then twenty. If you are a domainer you know how the story goes. I was lucky. I was there when the big drops came. Somewhere around the year 2000, the original registrants lost their domain names by forgetting to reregister, by losing interest in making a site and by going bankrupct. So there were these golden years during which I checked lists of dropped domains every night. I registered the generic, non-trademarkable ones, only the dot coms (a few dot org and net and us) and I checked the USPTO. I also imagined what domain names may be in demand in the future. Plumbers with URLs on the truck, Dentists, dog groomers. Everyone would have a site or perish. Some of my robot and nanotech domains will not come into their own for five or ten years. Imaging was all done in hospitals; now the freestanding clinics need a domain name. I get excited just imagining it. One might say, "obsessed." For the first two years of my little business, I never sold a domain. But my VISA card limit was high and so was my idea of where the Internet was going.

When it was time to incorporate my little business, Lynnela's Domains, became Domain Dakini, Inc. The most famous dakini in the West is probably the Red Vajrayogini who flying around in the Tibetan sky, naked and wearing a skullbone necklace. I don't exactly look like that. Sometimes I wish I did. Vajrayogini is really from the pure energy realm. I like that too!

Now, I practice dentistry, teach law to dental students, and make websites. My lack of skill in web design has been a plus in a way; Techies tell me I have clean code. No flash here. Just those kinds of domains that are filled with keywords used by docs, lawyers, biotech, nanotech, robotics, you name it. I started with dental domains. Medical, legal and science names were also natural for me. Then, I have to thank MIT's Technology Review in a big way because I would just read those articles about coming technologies and circle generic terms.

What am I up too today? I just ressurected a site I built in the year 1999 when I was organizing Tibet pilgrimages for the meditation center: Tibet Pilgrimage . It was popular then, I think because I wrote it with really no interest in making money, skimping on the travel arrangements, etc. So it is quite honest. I rewrote some of it to reflect the new milieu: Maoists in Nepal, Bird Flu here and there and everywhere,definitely in China, and different airline routes. Then I am adding to my Dental Smarts sites continually. I am almost finished my dental decay site. It's in honor of February, Dental Health Month. Cherchez le plaque!