Choosing Your Domain Name

Choosing your domain name is one of the single most important decisions that you’ll ever make in your business, believe it or not. Given the importance of selecting a domain name, it’s essential that you have a plan when picking a domain name.

There are 2 options for picking a domain name: you can create a new domain or you can buy an existing domain. Whichever you decide upon, whether it’s to pick a brand new domain or to purchase an existing one, we’ve outlined how to do both below.

If you’re relatively comfortable with being able to choose your own domain name and don’t feel overwhelmed by the process or if you’ve picked a domain name in the past and just want to hone your skills, we’ve put together a master list of the 14 things that you should consider when choosing your domain name for your business:

Start with Your Main Keywords

When you first begin the domain name selection process, you might start with several of your main keyword phrases that accurately describe your business. Once you put together this list of keywords, you can start pairing them together, mixing them, matching them, and adding suffixes or prefixes to create good domain ideas. For example, if you’re launching a basket weaving business, when choosing a domain you might start with words like “basket weaving, basket weaving supplies, basketry supplies, basket making material” then play around with various combinations of the keywords until you can find a good match.

Use a .com Domain Extension

The fact is that the .com top level domain extension (TLD) is the de-facto standard for domain names. Preferably, your web site should have a .com domain extension, whenever possible. Most people when typing any domain in an address bar will type in the .com extension automatically without even thinking about it. The .com extension is the overwhelming favorite with well over 70 million registered URLs. The other TLD extensions such as .net, .org, and .info lag far behind in popularity. You should stick with a .com domain extension.

Buy Other Top Level Domain (TLD) Extensions

While the “.com” domain extension is by far the most popular, you should also buy the other TLD extensions of your domain name, such as .net, .org, .info, .biz and similar extensions, to protect your brand from cyber-squatters and other site developers trying to sponge off your brand. You don’t have to build websites for these other domain extensions – you can simply redirect these additional domain extensions to whatever your primary domain happens to be. There’s nothing more frustrating for a site owner that’s forced to buy the .net version of his domain from some domain squatter who’s just trying to get a free ride by simply using the .net version of your domain name. Buying the other TLD extensions of your domain name now is far less expensive than having to buy out a cyber squatter down the road. If you do business internationally, think about securing country extensions as well (such as .co.uk). Also, don’t forget to purchase your .mobi domain. Mobile devices are just starting to build traction and while .mobi sites designed specifically for mobile users are limited now, you should still register the .mobi extension of your domain as well. As mobile usage grows, you may be glad you have that domain in two or three years.

Shorter Domains are Better

A shorter domain URL is much easier to remember, easier to brand and much easier to build a marketing plan around. It’s also more difficult for customers to misspell a shorter domain than it is a long domain name. Avoid any domain name that is hard to spell or is just plain confusing. Shorter domains are also an easier fit on business cards and other offline media. Some site names just simply look better when written down, another reason to keep the domain short, if possible.

Which of the 2 domains below do you think would be easier to brand, be easier to remember and look better on a business card?

When it comes to domain names, shorter is always better.

Avoid Numbers & Odd Letters in Your Domain

In general, avoid registering domains with hard to type letters such as the letters “q,” “z,” “x”. If it’s impossible to avoid using one of these letters, don’t fret too much about it, but try whenever possible to avoid letter and number combinations that are peculiar or difficult to spell or pronounce. Other number or odd letter combinations to avoid:

1. Avoid using the digit “0″ in your domain. The digit “0″ is often confused with the vowel “O”.
2. Avoid using the number “2″ in a domain for the word “to”, the number “4″ for the word “four”, or the letter “u” for the word “you”. You have to assume that your customers will get confused quickly and easily when it comes to your domain name selection. As clever as that 2hot4u.com domain name seems to be, you should avoid quirky, idiosyncratic domains like this whenever possible. If you insist on registering these odd-duck-domain-names, be sure to register the expanded form of the domain as well, i.e. if you are registering 2hot4u.com, you should also register toohotforyou.com.
3. Avoid using the following words in the domain as well, if possible:
   i. “online”, “site”, “web”, “the”, “my”

Avoid Double & Triple Letter Combinations

Double letters in domains can visibly get very confusing for your customers. For example “Jim Alcott Tattoos” would look like jimalcotttattoos.com, which just looks odd in an address bar and on paper. If you insist on having a double or triple letter combination in your domain like this, make sure that you register and redirect all combinations (jimalcottatoos.com, jimalcotatoos.com, etc) back to the correct domain spelling. Using domains with double and triple letter combinations can still work, but they tend to be pretty confusing and you should avoid confusing your customers at all costs.

Avoid Long Hyphenated URLs

Not too long ago, registering domain names with long strings of keywords separated by hyphens was a trendy practice of SEO industry folks. In the past, domains using keywords in the URL were awarded with higher search engine rankings, but this approach led to some ridiculously long URLs prone to misspellings and confusion. This naming approach has fallen out of favor though – there’s no longer any clear indication that search engines demonstrate a preference for hyphenated keyword URLs. In fact, search engines and Google, in particular, frown upon these types of URL’s and view them as just another form of spam.

If you have to use hyphens in your URL’s, don’t use more than 2 in the root of any domain. From a usability standpoint, long hyphenated URL’s tend to be very confusing, especially to novice internet users. It is far easier to say “greenwidget (all one word) dot com” than “green hyphen widget dot com”. Often times, trying to explain a hyphenated domain will get a response of “what is a hyphen?” or “where does the slash go? or “so it’s green what?” Novice internet users tend to have problems sorting out the difference between a dash, a slash, a hyphen, or an underscore. So from both usability and SEO perspectives, you should avoid using long hyphenated URL’s like this, if at all possible.

Make It Easy to Remember

Make a concerted effort to make your domain easy to remember and easy for your customers to use. The ease with which your domain can be called to mind is critically important on a number of levels. Ask yourself this question: How easy is it to tell someone the name, either over the phone or in a conversation, and have them easily find the site?

Make It Unique

Having your website confused with an already established site owned by someone else is a disaster in-waiting. Never, ever try to build your business on the back of a domain that uses the plural, hyphenated, or misspelled version of an already established domain. It’s a bad idea on many levels. So, don’t do that – ever, ever, ever.

Buy Misspellings of Your Domain

You should buy the most common misspellings of your domain name as well. Don’t give your competitors an opportunity to buy your misspelled domains and cheaply siphon off traffic that was meant for your site. You need to defend this type of direct navigation traffic because it’s some of the cheapest and most readily available traffic for your domain and your business. In order to generate those misspelled domains, get your friends and family to type your domain into their address bars 100 times each. Carefully keep track of every mistyped URL. The common misspellings of the domain name are the URLs you want to buy and point to your site.

Consider Buying an Existing Domain

Doing a search for your domain name of choice may reveal that it has already been taken by another domain owner. If the domain name is important enough for your business, you may want to consider making an offer to buy it from the existing domain owner instead of creating a new domain name. There are services available (such as Sedo.com) that can negotiate the sale of an existing domain name for you on your behalf.

Register Domains for as Long as Possible

Most people only register their domain names for the minimum 1 year when they initially register their domains, but you should secure your primary domain names for the maximum renewal period for several reasons. The maximum renewal period for a domain in the US is 10 years, and securing your domain name for that 10 years will only cost you $89 (current 10-year registration price at GoDaddy.com). With your entire company’s web presence at stake, if you can’t invest $89, you should probably reconsider being in this type of business. You need to avoid the prospect of missing your renewal and losing your domain. Registering it for the maximum period can help you avoid doing this in the short term.

Set to Automatically Renew

The larger domain name registrars will send pre-expiration reminders or even automatically renew on your behalf. Sign up for these protections whenever available. Be especially careful about using any smaller domain name reseller as they may not offer any type of automatic renewal feature. More than one small business owner I know has been rudely surprised by an expired domain.

Brand Name vs. Generic Keywords

For many entrepreneurs choosing a domain name, the question typically boils down to this: should I come up with a unique brand name for my business or should I use generic keywords in the domain instead. On the one hand, using a unique moniker is a great way to solidify and build on a brand that can uniquely position your business for years to come. A brand is more than just a combination of words. A brand is a “mental box” or a perceptual aggregate that is formed in the mind of consumers about your business. It’s more difficult to build a brand around generic keywords which is why names like loanforyourhome.com or shirtsandties.com aren’t as compelling or as “brandable” as names like bankrate.com or lendingtree.com.

On the other hand, having generic keywords in your domain name instead of having a unique brandable domain name has helped in 2 different areas. First, through direct navigation, otherwise known as “type-in” traffic, where a user types the domain directly into the address bar of the browser instead of clicking on a link to find the web site. Generic domain names such as cars.com and creditcards.com get an extraordinary amount of direct type-traffic in this manner. Using a keyword domain has also helped with search engine rankings – all things being equal, having the keyword in your domain will help you rank better for that keyword.

Currently, Google does show a ranking bias for keyword domains – but that may not always be the case. Search engines, and Google in particular can change their ranking formula at any time, and often do. You’ll need to consider how strategically important it is for your business to have that keyword in your domain name before making your decision. If you happen to come up with a very distinct, highly brand-able name (Google, Yahoo, Digg, Twitter, for example) without keywords, we suggest that you do that instead.

Names for Your Business

Having trouble coming up with a name for your business? Here are a few resources that can help you to generate some name ideas for you:

• http://www.halfagain.com/general-marketing/whats-my-name.html
• http://www.wordlab.com/tools/t_index.cfm

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