9 tips to choosing a perfect domain name

A domain name happens to be a prime aspect of creating a website. This is because; your domain name is your unique identity online. Thus, it is quite essential to have a unique yet perfect domain for your website to enhance your brand value as well as a unique identity online. Basis my experience in internet marketing, I will share some awesome tips to choosing a perfect domain name.

The right way to finding a perfect domain name

Web masters use different strategies to choose a domain name. So many top level domains have already been taken, so you may not get the most desired online identity for your business, So there is a need to learn the tips to consider before finalizing a domain name.

First off, create a list of available domain names for your website. You can go through the tips given below to select some good names. Once you have a list, select the best one among them and register the domain at the earliest time possible. You can ask others which names sound more ‘brandable’ and are easy to spell and type.

Some remarkable tips to find the perfect domain name

• Shorter is better

As always, short domains are easy to remember, spell, type and share. Let us consider the example of moz.com. Sometime back, moz.com was known as seomoz.com. Look how short and simple it is now!
Whatsoever, it is quite hard to get a domain name that is 3 characters wide, but trying for short ones should always be under consideration.

• Domain with key word

Well, many SEOs believe that keywords are essential to choose a perfect domain name. It is quite true. But I would suggest you to not struggle a lot to add keywords to your domain name. For instance, if adding keywords makes your domain very long and hard to remember, let go of it. This is only a tiny aspect of SEO. Just think about the above example, no one could ever tell from the name that moz.com refers to a site dealing with SEO, but we all have heard of it, and we know! 🙂

Example – If you sell bicycles in UK and domain with your business name Harrybicyles.co.uk is not available. You may add something like – Harrythebicycleguy.co.uk or Harrybicyleguy.co.uk. People love, when you add little vagary to your domain name.

Matt Cutts(Google webspam head) explains the reducing relevance of keywords in domain from SEO perspective.

• Avoid Hyphens and redirection to sub domains if possible

If you are going to start a new website, avoid hyphens and other misspellings since it will make it hard for the users to navigate to your site.

Also, some webmasters redirect the domain name to a sub-domain by default. For instance, if the domain name is example.com, they redirect it to news.example.com. This may be taxonomically favorable for organizing content on your site, but it looks good the other way.

• Make use of online tools

There are plenty of online tools that you can leverage to find a perfect domain name. I use a tool called Domize to instantly check for available domain names. There are plenty of other tools like Dotomator and Panabee that help you choose the perfect domain name by suggesting ideas. Give a shot on them for once.

• Dilemma of dot com, dot info, dot extensions etc

This choice should be made basis the nature of business and availability of domain names.

• Dot com – Internationally accepted, Go for this domain extension if you run a global business.
• Dot country extension – If your business boundaries are within the country, then it makes sense to go for domain names with your country extension like – .co.uk( UK) or .de( Germany) or .in ( India) or .co.nz(NewZealand) . A British citizen searching for Movers and packers to shift his apartment would give first choice of click a domain with UK extension over dot com. This is so because that sounds local to their country.
• Dot org extension – If you run a non profit or social cause or government organization – Domain with .org as extension is more suitable.
• Dot edu extension – As the name suggests, it is suitable for education business.
• Dot info or dot biz – You want to go for your brand name as domain name and there is no choice left, then you may go for this, instead of a completely different domain that is no way close to your brand.

• Think of a website as soon as you start a business

This is one of the mistakes that many small and mid-size business do. Planning and implementing a website always falls under secondary consideration when it comes to their business strategy. However, you can focus on reserving a domain name leastwise, when you start a new business. This way you can sync between your brand name and your online presence from the start.

• Be careful about expired domain names

Before you jump off to register a domain for your business when you find that a domain name is available, do a little research about the same. If that website already existed in the past and got expired, some users may already have an impression about that domain name. And if that is quite a bad impression, it may not do well for your business.

• Think based on your target location

If you are planning to set up a local business website, there is more chance of driving targeted traffic if you use your location name along with the domain name. Moreover, it will be easily available.
For instance, if you are providing SEO services at a location called Boston, you can think of names like ‘SeoServicesBoston’ or ‘BostonSEOServices’.

• Avoid confusing words

There is less chance of your visitors getting into your site when there is ambiguity in typing the domain name. Thus, avoid confusing words that have same pronunciation but different spelling.

Examples that can be confusing to remember – unmakemake , retaketake. These are difficult to remember names, In my opinion you should avoid similar sounding names.

Once you consider these tips to choosing a perfect domain name, the only thing that is left is to find a hosting company and start building your website. If you have some more ideas other than these, why not share it with us all through the comments below?