When you are building a web page or a site altogether, choosing a good domain may seem quite a hassle-free process in the initial stages, but gradually webmasters find out that getting hold of a good word available for your business domain is almost next to impossible.
Following are a few tips that can help you find a suitable domain name for your business while avoiding the potential pitfalls involved in one.
Register by your company name or your own
Your company name or your own name happens to be your best choice for domain name. Doing so helps you create your own brand. People know you by your name or that of your company; hence, that is what they expect your domain name to be. For instance, there is Apple.com, Google.com, Microsoft.com, etc.
Try looking for your company name and see if it is registered; if it is not, thank your stars and do the registration as soon as possible. However, if your stars do not happen to be so gracious, then find out who owns the domain and contact him or her to find out if the person is ready to sell it and at what cost. If you find that the domain is unattainable, then opt for changing the name of your company. Yes, your domain name is that important, especially if it is an online business. Finding a domain name and building a web page is only the start of the battle for an online business. The marketing is the hardest of all the steps and for that it’s important to have a good domain name.
Find a business-related keyword
Quite interestingly, a website idea often has its origin in keyword ideas. For instance, you would expect a domain name like getfit.com to be a site about fitness. But there are several keyword ideas that revolve around this term, like, fitness tips, quick fitness tips, fitness diets, how to be fit, etc. Just from these examples you can make out that fitnesstips.com, quickfitnesstips.com and so on are already registered.
Under such circumstances, you need to look for different words that can be related to your niche like, workout, healthy, slim, etc. Try these words in combination with the main keyword to see if you can come up with a nice name that hints at fitness.
Find a name that is easy to remember
If you are building a web page or a site, you need to make sure that it is easy to remember. It neither does have to be in English, nor does the word need to make sense, but it has to be something that can be easily recalled, like, Google, Twitter, Amazon, etc. You may be thinking that we remember the name of these websites because they are popular, but, think would they be as popular as they are today with long and difficult names?
Keep it short
Why? Because shorter names are easier to remember. If you have a keyword in your mind, you can still have a short domain name, like, if your keyword is website design, you can go for webdesign.com, instead of websitedesign.com. You should not forget that your domain is meant for the web users to type in. So, the shorter it is, the lesser work it is for them. Besides, having a bigger name also makes it prone to typing errors, taking your users to a wrong website, or none at all. Ideally speaking, your domain name should not be more than ten characters.
Do not use hyphens and numbers
A good domain name should be in words, because it is typed the way it is pronounced; hence, making it less probable to mistype errors. In case of numbers, people can use the word version of it rather than the figure or vice-versa.
The problem with hyphens is that they are never pronounced, like, web-design.com sounds exactly as webdesign.com. Users often miss the hyphen, thus, they land in your competitor’s website.
So, if you are building a web pageor a site, and thinking of getting a domain name for it, make sure you keep the above points in mind; you will surely find yourself a good one.
Editor’s Note: This is a guest article and we are not responsible for the production of this content.
