How to choose your Domain Name

Before starting a website for your company the first thing you have to do is to choose a domain name. You need to make sure that you are choosing it right because it will play a key role in SEO and marketing strategies. It will define your brand and your business and it will be your identity on the web.

So, how do you choose the right domain name that fits your business and it’s easy to promote and to be found?

Step one: Do your research

If you have some ideas of domain names, you better do research first. The most important thing is to check if the name is not used by another company, trademarked or copyrighted.

Also, you need to check if the name is available on social media sites, when you are building your brand it’s recommended to have the same name across your domain and social platforms. This way your brand will be more memorable, and your visitors will find you easily.

What defines your brand?

Considering that the domain name you choose will define your brand, it should follow your brand name, and be relevant to your business, giving a strong idea about what the website will be about.

The easiest choice is to use your brand name as your domain name when customers will search for your website by your brand name it will be much easier to find.

What about Keywords?

You could include keywords, but avoid an exact match domain (EMD) for the keywords you are targeting, because Google could consider it spammy.

Make it short

When it comes to the domain’s name size, keeping it short is always a good idea, it should have no more than 15 characters and contain one, two or maximum three words. Shorter means memorable and easy to pronounce and type.

Avoid numbers, hyphens and intentionally misspelled words

All of these elements are often misunderstood and could make a confusing experience for whoever wants to access your website, causing a loss of type-in traffic.

Hyphens can act as a spam indicator, and this could make it difficult to earn links.

Easy to type and pronounce

The domain name should be typed without a problem. The more complicated it is to type the more visitors could mistype it and end up on a different website.

Also, it should be easier for visitors to share your domain name by word of mouth, being pronounced without a struggle, this way it’s memorable too. You want your domain name to be passed along easily.

Domain name extension

The most popular extension is .com, it is the easiest to remember but because it is out there for so long it makes it difficult for you to pick a short and memorable domain name to go with it.

You can consider picking one of the many other extensions that will be appropriate for your type of business. Other often used extensions are:

• .biz -for business or commercial use.
• .co -for company, commerce, and community
• .info -for informational sites
• .me -for blogs or personal sites
• .net -technical, internet infrastructure sites

If you are not planning to take your business outside of your country a good option would be the country-specific extension like .ro for Romania, .de for Germany, etc.

Domain name expiration

When you are purchasing your domain name you must, by all means, make sure you won’t let it expire.

An expired domain name could lead to the risk of actually losing the domain and your visitors would be wondering if you closed your business. The email addresses that use your domain will go down as well and a long period of downtime could negatively influence your ranking in search results.

You can check if your domain name registrar offers automatically renew (in this case make sure your payment information is up to date), or set up a reminder for the expiration date.