How to Choose a Good Domain Name for Your Business?

Before you rush out and choose your domain name or name your website, you might want to consider the following points:

• Naming your website after your space may appear glaringly evident to some of you, however you’ll be astonished to discover that not every site is named after the area name notwithstanding when the website admin possesses that area name.
• Naming a website after its space name is essential, for the basic reason that when individuals think about your site, they’ll consider it by name. On the off chance that your name is additionally your URL (ie, web address), they’ll naturally know where to go. For instance, when individuals consider abc.com, they don’t need to ponder what web location to sort into their program to arrive. The name of the site is likewise the URL.
• Envision if your business (or site) is called “Summit”, however another person holds that area name. Rather, you have some dark space name called, say, “mybusiness.com”. What happens when your clients, reviewing that Acme has an item they need, sort “www.acme.com”? They’ll wind up at your rival’s site. One lost deal.

Choose a Good Domain Name for Your Business

In the current universe of the Internet, where individuals naturally swing to the Web for data, it pays to have a space name that mirrors your website or business. There are simply less things for your clients or guests to recollect. In addition, you don’t genuinely believe that they’ll attempt to remember a disconnected URL simply on the grounds that you need them to, isn’t that right? The main individuals who’ll submit it to memory are your rivals who need to analyze your costs.

Consider the possibility that you can’t get the area name of your decision. It truly relies on upon that you are so dedicated to that specific name. In the event that you have a current brand name that you’re known for, you’ll likely not have any desire to dump that name only on the grounds that you couldn’t get the space name. As it would turn out, it took you a ton of time and cash to set up that name. Provided that this is true, you may essentially need to attempt to purchase over the space name from the present proprietor.

Examination the “whois” data for the space, and contact that individual leaned to check whether they’re willing to offer it. You presumably ought to be mindful that they are prone to need to charge a higher expense than you’ll regularly get when purchasing new areas (accepting they need to offer it in any case).

Then again, in case you’re simply beginning, you may lean toward the less expensive option of attempting to get a space name in the first place, and after that naming your site (or business) after the area that you’ve gained. So in the event that you’ve obtained, say, the space name “acme.com”, then your site and business may be named “Top” or “acme.com”. I know this appears a touch like having things in the wrong order, yet that is the truth on the off chance that you would prefer not to miss out on the Internet.

Generic Names or Brand Name Domains?

I know that a number of people seem to think that your domain name really must be some generic name like “cars.com” if you are selling cars. Witness, for example, how much money those generic names are being sold for. But seriously, if you were looking for a car, you’ll probably already have some brands in mind, and you’re more like to try out things like generalmotors.com or toyota.com rather than just cars.com.

For that reason, I personally feel that a domain name that matches your brand name is very important. The very name that you use to advertise your product is the name that you will want for your domain, because that is the first thing that people will try in their browser. It is also the easiest thing for them to remember, and whatever that is easily remembered, will be more likely to be tried out than the obscure domain name.

Long or Short Domain Names?

Domain names can be of any length up to 67 characters. You don’t have to settle for an obscure domain name like avab.com when what you mean is AcmeVideosAndBooks.com.

Having said that, there appears to be some disagreement about whether a long or short domain name is better.

Some argue that shorter domain names are easier to remember, easier to type and far less susceptible to mistakes: for example, “getit.com” is easier to remember and less prone to typos than “connecttomywebsiteandobtainit.com”.

Others argue that a longer domain name is usually easier on the human memory – for example, “gaepw.com” is a sequence of unrelated letters that is difficult to remember and type correctly, whereas if we expand it to its long form, “GetAnEconomicallyPricedWebsite.com”, we are more likely to remember the domain name.

Some of these arguments are actually academic. It’s increasingly difficult to get short meaningful domain names. I have not checked, but I’m fairly certain that names like “getit.com” and “good.com” have long been sold. If you manage to get a short domain name though, the key is to make sure it’s a meaningful combination of characters and not the obscure “gaepw.com” in my contrived example above.

Long domain names that have your site keywords in them also have an advantage in that they fare better in a number of search engines. The latter give preference to keywords that are also found in your domain names. So, for example, if you have a site on free C++ compilers with a domain name like freecpluspluscompilers.com, it might fare better in a search for “free C++ compilers” than the corresponding page on my other website, thefreecountry.com.

Which would I go for? I’d go for the shorter name if I can get a meaningful one, but I’m not averse to longer names. However, I would probably avoid extremely long names verging on 67 characters. Aside from the obvious problem that people might not be able to remember such a long name, it would also be a chore typing it and trying to fit it as a title on your web page.

Hyphenated Names?

Should you get a hyphenated name? There are a few things to consider here:

Disadvantages

1. It’s easy to forget the hyphens when typing a name. Many users are used to typing things like freecpluspluscompilers.com but not free-c-plus-plus-compilers.com. They’ll probably leave out the hyphens and end up at your competitor’s site.

2. When people recommend your site to their friends verbally, having hyphens in your domain name leads to more potential errors than when the name does not contain hyphens. For example, how do you think your visitors will refer to your site if it is named “acme-books-and-videos.com”? They might say, “I visited Acme Book and Videos dot com yesterday. It was fabulous.” Their friends, remembering that comment later, might type into their browsers “acmebooksandvideos.com”. Oops.

3. It’s a pain in the neck to type. Enough said.

Advantages

1. Search engines can distinguish your keywords better and thus return your site more prominently in search results for those keywords occurring in your domain name.

2. The non-hyphenated form may no longer be available. At least this way, you still get the domain name you want.

Personally, I prefer to avoid hyphenated names if I can, but I guess it really depends on your domain name and your situation.

Plurals, “The”, and “My” Forms of the Domain Name

Very often, if you can’t get the domain name you want, the domain name registrar will suggest alternate forms of the name you typed. For example, if you wanted website.com, and it was taken (of course it is), it might suggest forms like:

thewebsite.com
mywebsite.com
websites.com

and the like, if they were not already taken as well. The question is, should you take them?

My personal opinion is that if you take the “the…” and “my…” forms of the domain name, you must always remember to promote your site with the full form of the name. Otherwise, people are likely to forget to affix the necessary “the” or “my”.

On the other hand, I would not take the plural form of the domain name (eg, websites.com) if I cannot also get “website.com”, since the chance of the visitor failing to type the “s” in the name is very great. Think about the famous name tussle between etoys.com and etoy.com. Many people wanting to go to etoys.com were apparently going to etoy.com instead. If it happened to them, it can happen to you too.

COM, ORG, NET, etc?

One common question I encounter is from people who can’t get the “.com” domain of their choice, but find the “.net”, “.org” or other country-specific top level domains (TLDs) available (like .de, .nu, .sg, etc). Should they try for these?

The answer is not as straightforward as you might think. If your website or business caters to the local community, such as a pizza delivery business or recruitment agency or the like, then it makes sense to get a country-specific domain. You actually benefit from having such a local domain because the people in your country know that they’re dealing with a local entity, which is what they want.

After all, if they stay in (say) the United Kingdom, they’re not likely to want to try to order pizza from pizzaparlour.com, which suggests an international site. You’ll have better luck calling it pizzaparlour.co.uk, ie, with a UK domain.

What if yours is a site or business that can benefit from an international audience? There are actually many schools of thought on this. I’ll just mention a few common ones.

The first school of thought goes on the premise that it is better to have a domain name of your choice “myperfectdomain” even if it has a TLD of “.net”, “.org” or some other country specific suffix, than to end up choosing an obscure domain name for the simple reason you can’t get your first choice. Thus they would settle for domain names like “myperfectdomain.de” or “myperfectdomain.net” or whatever. Against this is the argument that if you get a country specific domain, people might think that your business only caters to that country.

Another school of thought finds that “.net” and “.org” extensions are actually quite acceptable domain names. For some, the “.org” suffix actually describes the non-profit nature of their organisation. So, for example, the famous Apache web server can be found at “apache.org”.

Others settle for the “.com” suffix and no less. As grounds for their arguments, they cite the browser algorithms used to locate a website when a user simply types a name like “acme” into the browser. Apparently, the browser searches for a domain name “acme.com” before attempting “acme.net”, etc. As such, people who do that will be delivered to your competitor’s site if you do not also own the “.com” extension.

Indeed, even if people do not rely on their browser to complete their typing, many simply assume a “.com” suffix when they type a domain name, so if your business is “Acme”, they’ll just assume your domain name is “acme.com” rather than “acme.net” or some other such name.

As you can see, there are actually good grounds for accepting any of the above views. My personal footnote to the above arguments is that if you get a domain name with a suffix other than “.com”, make sure that you promote your business or website with the full domain name. For example, if your domain name is “dogandcatfood.net”, make sure that when you advertise your site or business, call it “dogandcatfood.net” not “dogandcatfood”. Otherwise people will assume a “.com” extension and travel to the wrong place.

Final Words:

In case the forest got lost in the trees in my arguments here, let me reiterate the main point of this article: get that domain name before you start your site or business.

Don’t make the mistake of attempting to retrofit your domain name to your business or website.