Choosing a good domain name is one of the most important decisions that you’ll ever have to make about your company. It is a crucial thing that affects your business in the long term. Domain name impacts your brand in so many areas of online advertising such as CTR, SEO, social media, referring links, etc.
Before you choose your domain name, you should ask yourself “What’s my goal about this domain name?”. What type of website would it be, is it going to be an e-commerce website, a brand or blog-based website for content marketing etc. Depending on which direction you’d go, it depends if you should play with the keywords, because when you have keywords in the domain name it helps with the SEO and the organic search, and also the domain name is important from the users perspective too. When you’re choosing a domain name you should take the following tips into consideration:
Make It Brandable
It’s a good thing when you choose your company name to be your domain name, it simplifies the process of searching. Also, you should consider using yourname.com if there is a level of relevance of your expertise in certain areas, and in this way, you’ll be continuously building your personal brand. But, first check if there is a trademark infringement about the domain name, and if there is one it’s better to avoid that domain.
Make It Intuitive
For example, when a user is searching for hosting, and the search results display a link from black.host domain usually the user will consider this as a relevant source because it actually has HOST in the domain name, opposite to let’s say a link from management.com domain that actually is not so intuitive.
Or Make It Unique
You can choose an arbitrary domain name that will be noticeable but won’t be associated with the business/industry that you are in. For example Shell, or Apple, or Google, etc.
Make It Short and Memorable
Don’t make it too long, max 3 words for a domain name is more than enough. If the domain name is shorter, it’s usually better and easier to remember it. But also try not to sound very generic, it’s good to be distinct and creative.
Check the Spelling
You should choose a domain name that is easy to spell and pronounce. Heads up on the spelling, because it’s bad to use a domain name that is hard or challenging to spell. You should be careful on the semantic too, and you should check if there is a hidden meaning, because sometimes when you’re trying to make a combination of 2 or more words for your domain name the combination may sound inappropriate. For example “therapist” sounds like “the rapist” and you don’t like to use that kind of domain name.
Use .com TLD
It is highly recommended to use .com for your TLD because it is most recognized, people are used to it and usually expect it to be the extension of the domain.
Avoid Numbers, Hyphens, Punctuation Marks, and Filler Words
It’s confusing! When you try to spell your domain name to someone, it’s going to be complicated. For example “lifescience-experts-on-demand.net” would sound “life science hyphen experts hyphen on hyphen demand dot net”. Or when you try to spell “50offtickets.com” you have to emphasize that 50 is actually with numbers, because someone may write “fiftyofftickets.com” instead, and that can be a whole other domain name.
Choosing a domain name is important because it can make a good first impression about your business, defines your brand, and can help to optimize the SEO. So, if you made your choice you can get your domain name now.
