Domain registration is like naming your first child. The first thing to do when starting a business is choosing a domain name for the company website. A domain name gives your business a significant online presence. It is good for any businesses branding. A domain name helps a business protect its brand image also. But choosing a domain name for your website is a very thorough and lengthy task. You will have to take a lot of things into consideration when applying for a domain name. So here are 5 steps for choosing the perfect domain name during domain registration.
What is a Domain Name?
As you need to build online presence of your business, you need to purchase a domain name. It’s just like your business address. Suppose, you have a business and for that business you must have a business address like Floor#123, Street#65x, City: xxx.
You have something like www.yourdomain.com as your online address by which global people can reach your business.
How Domain & Web Hosting Are Related
Your domain is just useless unless it is hosted anywhere. Web Hosting is a service which makes your domain live in the internet. After purchasing domain, you have to purchase web hosting service to host your website content. Web Hosting is such a service where you can keep your website data and people will see those data via your domain.
Steps For Choosing A Perfect Domain:
With millions of domain names registered every day, new domain owners need to be more creative in thinking of a domain name that is not already taken or one that will make stand out in search engines. Try to follow these tips when choosing your domain name.
1. Keep it short and sweet
We often make the mistake of choosing a long and flashy domain name. For example, if your companies name is “Robert, Johns and Johnsons Associates”. Robertjohnsjohnsonsassociates.com is a pretty long domain name. A domain name has to be short and simple.
During domain registration always try to shorten your domain name. A domain name has to be easy for your visitors to type into a browser. It has to be something that can easily be remembered by anyone. It can be a catchphrase or a shortened version of your company name. Based on a study done by Gaebler, the Top 50 Popular Websites have an average of six characters in their domain names.They are very hard for you to mistype and misspell.
Try avoiding putting your whole name or message into the domain name.
2. Choose a unique name
Always choose a unique name for you domain as well as business. Most probably, you don’t want your clients to be confused with a common name for two or three businesses. Don’t bother using plural, misspelled or hyphenated versions of an existing website.
If anything happens like a company with legal trademark sues against you just after finding out that most of their website traffic were sent to your website instead of theirs. It will be the worst thing for your business. So always make sure that you are avoiding such a situation like this. Check your domain availability with VernalWeb.
3. Choose the right TLD
Choose a top-level domain during domain registration for your site. A top-level domain or (TLD) is a part that comes after the domain name you’ve chosen for your site. .com, .org and .net are some examples of TLD.
Most websites choose the common .com TLD for their websites. But if you don’t come across one that suits your brand image, you can also go for other TLD’s like .info, .net, or .org. Here’s a list of the most commonly used top-level domain names and where they are used:
.com: Short form for company, commerce, and community.
.info: This is used by informational websites.
.net: This is mostly used by technical, Internet infrastructure or networking activity websites.
.org: Used for commercial or non-commercial organizations.
.biz: For commercial use, e.g., e-commerce sites.
.me: Used for blogs or personal websites.
Avoid taking TLD’s like .pw. They have a very bad reputation in the market and are most targeted by hackers. It is best not stray away from the .com TLD as it is the most recognized and trusted TLD out there. Other types of TLD’s often confuse your website visitors. It is always wise to be open-minded and start with something obvious.
4. Use relevant keywords
Try to use the keywords associated with your website to choose a domain name during domain registration. This will give your website visitors a clear idea of what to expect from your website. They will easily understand the content on your website. Use keyword research tools, when digging up for a good domain name.
But it’s okay if you can’t seem to find a domain name according to the keywords you have used. Many top level companies have used irrelevant keywords for their domain name. They are doing quite well using weird domain names irrelevant to their website.
Some people have also used their own names as a domain name. But using your name is appropriate for portfolio websites. This allows them to use their name as a brand. But sometimes your name only will not give our website visitors a clear idea of the content of your website.
5. Avoid numbers and hyphens
As your domain name needs to be simple and short, it’s best to avoid any type of numbers and hyphens in your domain name. People will always tend to forget website names which have numbers or hyphens or a combination of both in them. For example, if your website’s name is “Gear5.com”, people hearing your websites address will misunderstand if it’s “gear5.com” or “gearfive.com”.
Sometimes websites have a dash or hyphen in between their domain name for example “gear-game.com”. A hyphen can easily be misplaced or forgotten when a visitor is typing it into a browser.
In some cases, it is also wise to register all the misspelled versions of your domain during domain registration. Your visitors have a less chance of being redirected to some other website this way.
6. Choose .com TLD for commercial purposes
If you are going to build any website for commercial purpose, it’s probably the best way to choose .com top level domain. As per market research, it’s the proven fact that people always trust a website with .com extension rather than any other extension.
Although it’s been a little bit tougher task to get an have a unique .com domain, you have to be creative to choose a domain as it’s in the market for a long time.
It’s will be a great job if you can choose a short and memorable domain name with .com TLD.
7. Check if the domain name is available
Do not go straight ahead and buy a domain name immediately as soon as you’ve decided on one. Always check o see if the domain is still available. Sometimes other websites have similar sounding domain names or something that sounds close.
Do some research first and take as much time as you want. Research can easily be done using domain search tools. But if you already have to host, there is no need of domain registration from these sites. As your whole brand value depends on your domain name, don’t just spend five minutes researching about it.
Try to select a domain by choosing the best out of three from a list. Domains with two words or less cost a lot in terms of domains with four to six words. But if you are not on a tight budget, I will suggest you get a 2-word domain as these are easy to remember and have a high brand value.
Conclusion
A domain name is used to project your culture and make your business or company stand out as brand. A simple misstep during domain registration could spell disaster for you. But don’t be afraid to think out of the box at times. Following the simple steps mentioned above can be very helpful for you in the long run.
Let’s go through the checklist again for one final time.
- Keep it as short and simple as possible.
- Use the most relevant key words.
- Try to look for alternate TLD’s.
- Always check before you register for a domain name.
- Avoid putting hyphens and numbers in your domain name.
Hope these tips and tricks are helpful for you while choosing a domain name for your website. May your domain registration efforts be joyful.
