When you are choosing a domain name for your business or personal website, it is not something you should rush into. It might seem like a fairly straightforward process but it is one of the things that you should make sure that you get right the first time. Here are the key considerations when choosing your domain name.
It is difficult to change once you have gone ahead with it
Once you decide on your domain name and set up your website, as you start to invest more time and effort into your marketing, you are generating more traffic to the website and people are becoming familiar with your domain name. This makes it easier for them to remember next time around if they want to visit your website and people’s browsers are often set to recall addresses from past history when they start typing the name. Therefore, if you were to decide after a year that you wanted to change your domain name, a lot of the hard work you had put in to get people to your original one would be wasted.
The shorter, the better
Choosing a name that is short makes it easier to remember; nobody wants to be typing out long domain names when they try and find a business. The problem is, a lot of the short and snappy names related to your industry are likely to be taken, so you might have to be a little bit creative.
Try to include your main keyword
Whilst you should be careful not to go for a really long domain name, including a keyword is definitely recommended. For example, a marketing company would want to include the word ‘marketing’ in their domain name. Another good example is a website called BettingGuru that ranks best sites available for people looking for online betting platforms. This domain name BettingGuru, has the ‘betting’ keyword in and also gives an indication of what they do, in the term ‘guru’ they are conveying their expertise in helping people to find the best betting sites. This name is also very short and easy to remember.
Research your domain name first
There are a few different reasons why you should research a domain name, for example, you could choose a name that has negative connotations that you were not aware of. So, use Google to find out if there is any hidden meaning you were not aware of. Also, you want to make sure that there is the availability on social media for the name that you are looking to use and that someone else has not already taken the account names you would want.
“Instagram and other Social Media Apps” (CC BY 2.0) by Jason A. Howie
Make sure it is easy to understand
It can be tempting to try something a little bit quirky to stand out from the crowd, but remember, you will need to make it easy for someone to recall from a telephone call or for referring you onto someone else. Having hyphens, numbers or words that are difficult to spell make that a whole lot more difficult.
If you follow these five pointers then you should be able to come up with a good domain name that is easy to remember and helps with your marketing strategy.
