Choosing a domain name is one of the most important things you can do when creating a website. Your domain name is your brand and it tells something about your brand right away. Before you choose a random domain name, consider the following aspects of design and choice before you make your final decision.
Brainstorm Keywords
You should think of about 5 phrases or keywords that describe your website, brand, or what you hope to accomplish. For example, a website with the name Rugs To Go, would probably be a site about a rug company where you can order rugs online for delivery to your house. Think of at least 5 phrases that describe your domain or your goals. Think of words related to your industry. For example, if you are a pet shot, you could think of words like “pets,” “pet care.” “pet health,” or “dogs and cats.” Fiddle around with the industry keywords and the name of your brand to find the perfect name.
Choose Something Memorable
Simple domain names are the best. People are more likely to remember Petproducts.com than they are to remember Joespetproductwarehouse.com. Make it easy to remember your name and share it with others. As a bonus, a short and memorable website will also work well in other forms of advertisements, including TV ads or radio ads. Keeping your name short will go a long way toward making it easy to remember and will fit better on social media accounts and business cards. Think about the store GAP. That is one of the shortest and easiest brands to remember in the industry.
Keep It Simple
Don’t use hyphens or numbers in your site name. For example, if your site name is 4yourpets.com, visitors will always wonder if it was 4 the number or four the word. This makes it harder for visitors to remember your website. Hyphens just complicate things and should never be used either. 4-pets.com is a terrible online domain name because it uses numbers and hyphens. You want to make it impossible for people to forget how to visit your site again.
Avoid Trends
A lot of sites use strange misspellings of words. Don’t do this if you plan on keeping your site around for more than a couple of years. Avoid the current trend of calling things 2.0. That is a trend that will die soon, will date your domain name, and will also make it hard for people to find.
Use the Right Extension
You must determine which extension to use on your website. If you are targeting a specific country you should use the extension for that country (.au for Australia, for example). .com and .net are typically used for general name sites. .info is for infomrationa sites, .net is technical info, .org is for non-commercial sites, and .biz is for business sites.
Protect Your Name
To protect your brand, you should buy a variety of domain extensions and names that are similar to yours. This will help keep competitors away and allow misspellings to still get to your site.
Buy It Fast
If you think of a good domain name and want to use it, register it right away. Even if you don’t plan to use it for a while, go ahead and register it. That way you can protect your investment. There are also some domain sharks that will try to purchase domain names out from under you if you don’t register it right away.
Follow these steps and you will ensure that your domain name is as good as your business and will stand out from the millions of competitors online.