One of the main factor that a website will succeed is its domain name. Take for example simple yet easy to remember domain such as yahoo.com, google.com, facebook.com, and many others – shows that choosing a domain name don’t need to be complicated.
Following are ten simple tips for those just started their online business or creating a supporting business site:
1. Using your business or website name as domain name.
It could work best if your website name or business name is unique and short. But if it is too long or complicated to remember, you might need to choose other name that is appropriate and connected to your business.
2. Short and Simple
Yahoo won’t have succeeded if they use www.yahoosearchengine.com as their domain. That’s why they created a short and simple word taken from their website name “yahoo” as their www.yahoo.com domain. This is important, always try to keep your domain name as short and as simple as possible for people to remember.
3. Spell Check
Even though there are few sites excelled using misspelled name or jargon. But if you're a new website owner without any strong background or famous product trademark, it should be noted that the use of correct and simple spelling in the domain name is compulsory in order to get new audiences coming to your site.
4. Be specific
Instead
of choosing a simple domain name such as www.petshop.com, you can input
your location or expertise such as www.newyorkpetshop.com or
www.dogpetshop.com.
5. Don’t use any jargon or words that are not common and hard to remember
If
you’re not trying to reach for a specific group of people (specific
country/region, religion, and others), you must not use any jargon and
use only English words that are easy to understood and remembered by
everyone.
6. Search and choose the most optimized keyword to be used on your domain name
Being friendly with search engines mean having a website address that often searched on the web. It requires you to input a specific and well-researched keyword related to your business into your site’s name. There are a lot of free tools such as Google Adwords Keyword Tools and Google Trends that you can use to search for the best keyword to be used as a part of your domain name.
7. Don’t use hyphens and other uncommon characters
It is better if your domain name doesn’t have strange characters that are hard to remember such as hyphens (-).
8. Choose the correct extension
There are many domain extension that you can choose such as .com, .net, or .org. While .com is the most popular one, you might need to consider using specific domain such as co.uk or co.se if you’re targeting a particular country only.
9. Be aware of similar domain names
Before finalizing your domain name, you should check for other similar domain name or even same domain name with different extension (.net, .org, etc). This is really important because you don’t want your site to be related with other site from bad neighborhood.
10. Avoid infringement
Don’t EVER use any copyrighted trademark such as Apple, Acer, and many others. Or else, when your website grows, you’ll face a troublesome court battle. You should check copyright.gov before finalizing your domain name.