Your domain name is like your online storefront. It’s the first thing people see when they reach you, and you need to make the most of it. As the old business cliché goes, it’s all about “location, location, location!” If your location on the internet (that is, your domain name) is obscure and hard to find, your future customers are likely going to find someone else first. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when choosing a domain name.
- Make it easy to remember. While bookmarking sites is all the rage these days, many people don’t do it, and depending on their interests they might not have a need to bookmark your site for regular access. If they hear about your business from a friend, or even if they have it written down on a business card or piece of paper somewhere, your domain name should stick in their mind.
- Keep it short. People may be typing your domain name in manually, at least the first time. Try to keep it under 20 characters if possible. Your name should be punchy and impactful.
- Extensions. Try to use the “.com” extension if possible. “.net” (and “.ca” in Canada) is also popular, but you’ll no doubt have people accidentally typing “.com” because that’s the default for so many sites and the one everyone thinks of first.
- Spelling. If you want certain words that are already taken, don’t spell them differently or oddly; you’ll just confuse customers. Choose words that are easy to spell—and even easy to pronounce. Don’t make people scratch their heads in confusion when they learn your domain name!
- Stick with the alphabet. Anything odd like symbols, non-alphabetical characters, even numbers, or odd spellings, may result in typos that will direct the user to someone else’s website. Avoid initials and hyphenation between words.
- Make it make sense. Is the meaning of your domain name clear? People want to be engaged by a cool or clever name, but they don’t want to be confused, and you want them to understand right away the purpose of your site. If your business name isn’t long and complicated, and meets the criteria above, it might be a good idea to use it as your domain name.
- Make it appropriate. Think of your target market, and the image your business is trying to project. If you’re running a small law firm, you probably don’t want a name that’s flashy, tacky, or “edgy.”
- Make it GEO targeted. For example, if you offered massage services and your business was in Dallas, you should try to get the url www.DallasMassage.com or some variatoin of that. It does better when it comes to SEO and rankings from the search engines over a url that would be named something like www.healthyhands.com. It obvious why the search engines prefer the first url over the second. The goal when GEO optimizing your url is: LOCATION + MAJOR KEYWORD as long as it follows all the other above points.
