Choosing the Best Domain Name
One of the most difficult things about starting a new business is deciding on a name for your business, but nowadays this task can be even more difficult. If you want to stay competitive, you’ll also need a website, so you’ll also have to decide on your domain name or website address. Here are some tips on how to choose the best domain name for your business:
- Use Consistent Branding.
You should try to use the same domain name as your business name or something close. These days that can be very challenging, as many domain names have already been purchased. - Choosing the Best Domain Extension.
You’ll also need to decide on a domain extension. The most popular for business is .com. If you’re a non-profit, you’ll want a .org extension. Another common choice is .net, but it’s not as common and it could make it harder for people to find you. If you’re only doing business in a country outside of the U.S., you can better target your customers by using your country’s extension like .co.uk for the UK. Many people will buy both the .com extension as well as the extension within their country and use both. In general, the .com extension will improve your ranking as Google gives .com websites preferential treatment and overall it looks more professional. - Keep it Short.
If your business name is long or particularly complicated, you might want to consider a shortened version for your domain address. The longer your domain address, the harder it will be for people to be able to find you and also type it into a url. If people have to look to hard for you, they might just go with one of your competitors instead. - No Punctuation or Numbers.
Punctuation, especially hyphens, confuse people and chances are they won’t be able to find your business. If your potential customers don’t include the hyphen or other punctuation when typing in your domain address, they might not be able to pull up your website. Also when people hear a number, they don’t know if it’s the numeric digit or it’s spelled out, which can be confusing. - Make it easy to type.
No slang or abbreviated words. You want it to be easy for your customers to type in your address and find you easily. - Use keywords.
To improve your SEO, use keywords that describe your business or the services you provide. For instance, if you’re a website design company, you might use moowebdesign.com. You can also use your location in your domain address if you only target a specific area, like edinburghwebsitedesign.com. Using keywords can really help your ranking in Google search results, as well as on Google Maps & Business. - Check copyrights and trademarks.
Make sure you do your research and check the name isn’t trademarked, certified or registered. You also want to make sure a similarly named company doesn’t exists in another country in case it might interfere with your customer base.
I hope these tips on how to choose the best domain name for your business make it a little easier when you’re trying to choose the best domain name for your business!
Are you having trouble deciding on a domain name? Just leave a comment with any questions below, and hopefully we can help you with your decision!