Choosing a domain name is one of the most crucial choices you’ll make as a website owner. If you choose poorly, your brand’s reputation can suffer.
Although it has a very practical purpose, your domain name is much more than just a placeholder in the world wide web – it is the front door to your business and quite frequently a potential client or buyer will come into contact with your brand for the first time through your domain.
Fortunately, selecting a successful domain isn’t that difficult. As long as you do your homework, stay true to your brand, and select something approachable, you should make a positive impression.
In this article, I’m going to share some advice I’ve learned over the years about how to navigate the domain registration industry with you in order to assist you make the best choice.
#1 – Keep Your Domain Name Short
For several reasons, a short domain name will work better. They are first quicker to type and easier to remember. As a result, they are more likely to promote a positive user experience. This is crucial given that an increasing number of individuals are using the internet on mobile devices. When a domain name is brief, autocorrect has less potential of surprising mobile users. Another method to deter visitors is to use an overly long URL. Users may become suspicious if you overstuff your domain with pointless terms.
#2 – Incorporate Targeted Keywords
Not only is content a place for keywords. Search engines utilise the domain name of your website to interpret its content and decide its position in search results. Therefore, it is advised to include keywords whenever possible. Your domain name should include words that are relevant to your website and targeted at the right demographic. If you’re having trouble coming up with ideas, try using Google Keyword Planner. To find terms people actually use, you can use this free tool to explore keywords based on search volume and other characteristics. However, a domain name gives you little room to manoeuvre, so you should only incorporate keywords.
#3 – Make Sure Your Domain is Easy to Pronounce and Spell
You definitely want your domain name to be unique and memorable. Newness, though, isn’t always a good thing. You risk confusing your audience if you change a familiar word’s spelling. Word-of-mouth advertising can be very successful, but it only works when people can pronounce your domain name properly, don’t feel silly saying it out loud or worry about pronunciation. Additionally, by making the name easier to remember, visitors are more likely to visit and share the website with their networks.
#4 – Avoid Hyphens (or anything that isn’t a letter!)
Although using hyphens to obtain the desired domain name is still common, it can be difficult to recite them out loud (just try saying “dash” or “hyphen” out loud). They also make it more challenging to type the domain. A user might become frustrated as a result of this bad user experience. Even worse, they can simply give up and visit a different website. Although there are few exceptions, it is advised to avoid using anything other than a letter when you are thinking of possible domain names. This includes changing letters to digits, which makes it more simpler for users to type the name incorrectly.
#5 – Stay Unique and On Brand
Your brand should be reflected in your domain name and vice versa. Brands can take time to establish, so using your distinctive brand name in your domain can make you stand out, get noticed, and get more people to visit your website. Just make sure you don’t copy any trademarks or brand names while coming up with your domain name and brand name.
#6 – Pick a Domain Name That’s Flexible
One place where you shouldn’t try to fit yourself into a mould is your domain name. While being specialised is important to draw in visitors, you shouldn’t be too specific that your website can’t expand. For instance, if you are a life coach who focuses on careers, you may want to use something along the lines of the expertcareercoach.co.uk, but this is funnelling you into one field, when realistically, in the future you’d like to expand to offer more support in other areas of life, not just careers.Therefore, it becomes sense to think about how your website or company might grow in the future. This choice should be made with the long term in mind.
#7 – Check the Domain History
You may have your heart set on a brand-new domain name. But it’s also possible that the domain you want to buy already belonged to someone else. It is advisable to look into the domain’s past since this could have an impact on how well your site is ranked by search engines. You may utilise a few programmes, including Wayback Machine, to look for previous owners.
#8 – Research Social Media Handles
It’s likely that you’ll want to build social media profiles that are connected to your domain name and website if you intend to interact with your visitors or clients there. In order to determine whether your domain name is accessible in handle form, it is advisable to check your chosen social networking platforms. As an alternative, you can see if a domain name variant is accessible. It is typical to do this. You may easily accomplish this manually if you don’t intend to utilise a lot of social networking platforms. However, if you need some assistance, Namecheckr is a fantastic way to quickly view all of the available social media accounts.
As you can see, using my strategic approach to choosing the perfect domain name isn’t rocket science, it just takes some common sense and to put in the work without cutting corners and you will be sure that your URL will make a great first impression. So, if you’re ready to land that perfect domain name, use my handy tips and get your search underway.
