How To Choose The Right Domain Name?

Address is crucial to find someone’s home and to get your home found by others. Similarly, in the world of Internet, websites do have addresses that are generally built of:

• http:// or http://=> Short for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol.
• www => Short for World Wide Web. It is optional as you can have a website address without it too.
• Domain Name => The name you choose for your website is known as Domain name, and it is subject to availability.
• Domain Extension => It is the end part of the address in the form of .com, .org, .info, .net, etc.

So the web addresses look like http://www.example.com or http://www.example.com or http://example.com or http://example.com

Out of these parts of the web address, Domain Name is the most important part which is subject to availability, and it is the one that displays your brand.

Even if you are a blogger, you need to create a domain name wisely. Choose domain names that somehow tell about your site and business. For example, if I am blogging about clothing I won’t name it using words like technology tips and tricks rather I would name it something like clothsandfashion.com or something that reflects what I am writing on my blog.

However, nowadays branded domains are coming into the use that don’t speak anything about the business or blog, but people keep such names and brand their business with it. For example, the name Google doesn’t display what the Google Company does. But, over the time, they have branded it so well that we have replaced the word search it on Google to Google it.

So you can either get a domain name that reflects your business or take any domain and brand it well.

Coming to the point, as there are many things we need to consider when it comes to choosing the right domain name for our business website or blog, I am sharing 10 tips to choose the right domain name.

Below are the 10 tips to choose the right and the perfect domain name:

1. Unique and Easy to remember

Domain name is a big part of your company’s identity. Thus, choosing a unique domain name is very important. Never choose the name that can be easily confused with your competitors’ domains because it can cost you traffic loss in most cases. Always choose a unique name for your website.

Always consider “easy to remember” factor because a domain name that is easy to remember can get more direct traffic. Many times we as a user type website names in our web browser like Facebook.com, Yahoo.com, Google.com, Amazon.com, etc. because they are easy to remember and easy to type as well. But, when you have to open some website that has long names or those with hyphens, you probably use search engines to search for them because you cannot remember long domains all the time.  So try to keep your domain name short and simple.

Therefore, choosing a unique and easy to remember domain name is a professional choice that you must consider while choosing a domain name for your business or blog.

2. Keyword Relevant Domain

In the early days, keeping your targeted keyword in your domain was imperative and effective too. But, Google’s EMD update made it an outdated way of choosing domain names. Still in many cases, keeping a domain name somewhere around relevant keywords is a good idea because it does give an idea to the visitors about what you offer on the website.

It is not highly recommended, but it is still not a bad idea to choose domains using your keywords. But, don’t spam by stuffing keywords only.

3. Check for Copyright Infringement

To avoid future legal issues, always check whether the name you are using is already copyrighted by someone or it is someone else’s trademark. There are websites where you can check for copyright and trademark.

• http://www.copyright.gov/records/
• http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/

If the domain name is already copyrighted by someone then don’t use it.

4. Avoid Hyphens and Numbers

I talked early in this post about choosing short and simple domain name because they are easy to remember. To keep things simple and short avoid using hyphens because most of the people remember the domain names that don’t have hyphens. No one likes to type domain names that have one or multiple hyphens.

Also, avoid numbers because they create confusion at times. Suppose I tell you verbally to open 5fighter.com then you might get confused whether you have to type 5figther.com or fivefigther.com. Therefore, keep it simple by not using numbers as they create confusions.

I have various domains with me for different purposes, and I don’t have numbers and hyphens in any of them.

5. Use Domain Name Generator Tools

Tools are present for carrying out various tasks effectively and in a time efficient manner. There are many domain name generator tools available online that you can use to generate domain name ideas around the word you seed into it.

A few examples of such tools are:

• leandomainsearch.com
• panabee.com
• nameboy.com

These tools will show you a huge number of suggestions, and that will make your work of choosing a good domain very easy.

6. Don’t go for misspelled Domains

There are so many sites which domain names seem to be misspelled. You should always avoid this because doing this will leave no chances for you to build a good brand.

Let’s understand with an example: If a guy is searching for a domain such as “techtricks.com” which is not available then what will he do? He will probably add an extra “s” and make it “techtrickss.com” which can be available, and build his site.

But, did he do the right thing?

Of course not! Because the domain techtricks.com will always be considered as the original website and another one with extra “s” can never build its brand. Therefore, rather than misspelling domain names try choosing something different and unique as I have discussed in the point #1.

7. Use Appropriate Domain Extension

Domain extensions are like the suffixes that you see with Domain Names. There are many such extensions available for different purposes such as:

• .info – for informational sites
• .org – for organizational sites
• .net – for Networks
• .in – For Indian sites
• .co.uk – fork UK sites.
• .com – commercial

The list is huge. Though they can be used for different purposes, you are not bound to get particular one. I mean if you have an information provider site, then you can get .info, but you are not obliged to take it. You can take .net, .com, or any other as per your choice.

The most famous and professional domain extension is .com which has been around for very long. Other extensions have been gradually created as per requirements.

My preference is always .com domain extension. As I said earlier that I have various domains with me that I use for different purposes. To your surprise, all domains are with .com extension except one which is with .org.

I would suggest you to prefer .com domain extension over other extensions.

8. Choose domains that are future-proof

Always think of future while selecting the domain name as it may stop you from expanding.

For example,

If you take a domain menfashion.com for your current business of selling Men’s cloth, and later when you grow well and want to sell women clothes too then you might not expand it because your domain name has the word “Men” that restricts you from selling “women” clothing.
Therefore, don’t choose something that may restrict you to expand in future. Choose broad category domain name. For the above example, you can have a domain name such as justfashion.com, not menfashion.com so that even you want to expand in future to sell women and kids clothing too, you can easily add them to your business without any issues.

9. Avoid Embarrassing Words

We connect two or three different words to make a domain name, and many a time while joining them there may be some embarrassing words can be formed,

For example,

“Pen” and “Island” if combined you get embarrassing word that won’t sound well when someone pronounce it.

“Therapist” and “center” when combined it makes “therapistcenter “that if you pronounce it will sound odd.

So, always keep a close look on this matter, and also do pronounce the domain name before purchasing to find out that it sounds well and not some embarrassing stuff is coming out.

10. Consider checking for Domain Abuse

There are chances that the domain you are buying had been used by someone in the past, and then it was dropped. So, you don’t know how the previous owner used that domain. You should know whether the domain was used in a proper and good manner or used for spamming and manipulating the search engines. It is important because if you choose a domain that was previously used for spamming, then you might not make a great site with it that ranks well in SERPs.

There are many ways you can check, and one of the ways is by using Wayback Machine, and also by checking with link checker tools that may get you some ideas.

Conclusion

Domain name is most important part of the online business because it is what with which your company or brand is displayed in the industry. It must be short, simple, professional, and easy to remember. The above-mentioned tips may help you well to choose the right domain name for your company or blog.

Share your ideas on this topic. I would love to hear your thoughts in comments.

Note: Domain names are used in the blog post are just for example. If you have any concerns about this, please use contact form to discuss. Thank you.