Notaries often ask me, should I use a business name? Do notaries need to register as a business? Does a notary public have to get a business license? The answer is yes. Any business, including a home-based notary business needs a business license, otherwise, you might be operating illegally. For a notary to get a business license is not hard, just contact your county clerk’s county recorder office and ask them what the procedure is. It is generally under $200 and the paperwork is not difficult. Getting a fictitious business name for your notary business can also be the prerequisite to getting a bank account with your company name on it!
But, what to name your notary business? Too many notary businesses have similar sounding names, and they all become one big blur. We wrote a blog entry all about signing company names which sound similar which is a fun blog entry to read.
Yellow Page Names
It is common for notaries advertising in the yellow pages to want to show up at the beginning of their section. Names like A1 Notary, AAA Mobile Notary, AAAA Traveling Notary, and Aardvark Notary are common. Unfortunately, your clueless customers will get mad when you are not the auto club and tell you to change your name!!! It happened to me, I know.
Glamour Names
Then, there are those who want the glamourous names like Royal Notary, Elite Notary, On Time Notary, and other vanity names. You could capitize on a character trait such as Integrity Notary, Rapid Notary, or Honest Notary.
Geographic Names
Geographic names are very good for website optimization. If your business name is Glendora Mobile Notary Service, then your website will show up very well for local keywords.
Personal Names
We have one client who’s business name is Ellen the Notary. That is easy to remember and very personable too! Johnson’s Traveling Notary is another example of a personal type of a notary business name. Sam’s Meandering Notary is yet another.
Unique Names
But, what about more unique sounding names? I generally recommend either geographically recognizable business names or unique ones. A confusion between your business and some other business with a bad reputation can be crippling! If it were me, I would really put a few weeks of brainstorming and asking your friends to find that perfect name for your notary business. After you have narrowed it down to a few names, reflect carefully to select the ideal name as you will be stuck with it for a very long time!
You might also like:
Compilation of posts about Notary business names
http://blog.123notary.com/?p=21760
Comedic slogans for Notaries listed on our site
http://blog.123notary.com/?p=20410
Deceptive identities – Signing Companies with Similar Names
7 ways to use Facebook to market your notary services
http://blog.123notary.com/?p=5396
Business cards for mobile notaries
http://blog.123notary.com/?p=36
GREAT ARTICLE!
Those were great thoughts for naming a notary business! We agree! We named our business “SD Signings”… we also own “San Diego Signings”.
We built our initial website on the sdignings.com name. We are being beat on web searches by notary organizations named with words indicating their full city name and the word notary. That was a very true statement in the article! We hope to launch the sandiegosignings .com site soon for this purpose, to regain more search engine optimization.
The other nice part of indicating a city within your name has been the association. Within two weeks of opening up for business customers had indicated they had heard of our business before. It had us laughing, it was simply the association with the name SD or San Diego. Our logo also revolves around the San Diego sailboat theme. For the notary business this made us a uniquely different logo to recognize as we didn’t have the typical pen and ink. Escrows could tell us apart easily. For the web customer, it was again an association with other trusted San Diego businesses! They thought they knew of us!
Great business books like Re-Work and Good to Great indicate the need to be uniquely and passionately different in running your business according to who you are as an individual or team. It’s great to indicate your uniqueness to be remembered for what your specialties are in the industry! You’ll actually find a better clientele for yourself as your clients are searching for the same things you believe in! Maybe you could indicate that in your name, or at least marketing. Ultimately, It sure doesn’t hurt to have the right keywords in your webname!
Again, great ideas within this article! 🙂
Comment by Patrick Hall — February 10, 2012 @ 7:24 pm
The suggestion is to incorporate your name.
Also, they say the shorter the name, the easier to remember.
I didn’t do this but l still like my company name.
Integrity Notary Service, Inc.
Happy business name hunting!
Comment by JACQUELINE — March 11, 2019 @ 4:01 pm