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How to choose the best domain name for your website
Instead of rushing to buy cheap domain names for your web empire, consider these critical factors before choosing a domain name for your website.
Choosing the right domain name for your website is the first critical decision you need to make in your online marketing campaign. Get it wrong and you could end up with the wrong type of traffic or very little traffic at all. Naturally, your overall business marketing strategy will dictate your objectives for your online presence, but the key critical factors which you need to take into account are these:
Is your business focused on your brand?
If you think about the major corporations like Virgin, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, etc. where the focus of the business is in building and maintaining a brand, then of course you want to get hold of a domain name which contains your brand name. This will then become central to your marketing plan in the future, so the first domain you purchase should include your brand name within it.
Is your business focused on a particular market?
Given that all businesses will serve one or more markets, you should ideally focus your domain name on keyword phrases which relate directly to your market or the products you sell into that market. For example, if you sell boilers you might target a domain which includes the word ‘boilers’ in its name. Or if you sell a number of products into the personal hygiene market, you might try to find a domain which contains a relevant generic phrase e.g. ‘womenshygiene’.
There is, of course, nothing to stop you buying a number of different domain names which relate to your market and in practice you would try to acquire as many domains as possible which relate to your market focus. The difficulty - as many will testify - is that many of the obvious domain names have already been taken, so…
What if the domain name you want is already taken?
Time to get creative. Look at the keyword phrases which your target customers use to find you and your products and see if you can create a domain name using one of those keyphrases. If everything has been taken, you could use hyphens between the words in the phrase, but limit yourself to one or at most two hyphens. Otherwise your domain name will be seen as being ‘spammy’. Bear in mind also that domains which include hyphens are likely to be reviewed by a human reviewer, before being indexed in Google.
Alternatively, if a specific domain name is important to you, establish whether the domain is being held by a domain broker, someone who is holding the domain for their own use (but which is currently inactive) or whether the domain is in active use. In the case of a broker, most will be holding the domain with the intention of resale at a profit, so be prepared to pay. It is usually better to use a third party to negotiate the purchase of a domain with potential. Domain service companies, such as Sedo.co.uk, provide such valuation and negotiation services. Such companies will also negotiate the purchase of an active website on your behalf, but this is a specialist area in itself and beyond the scope of this article.
If the domain appears to be held privately, if possible try to contact the owner directly and ask what their intentions are in relation to the domain. The chances are they’ve bought the domain with the intention of doing something with it, but haven’t got around to actually developing anything. In this case, make an offer to cover a few year’s registration fees and you may well be successful in obtaining the domain.
Which domain extension should you obtain?
Without doubt the most usable TLD (top level domain) extension is .com. If your market is geographically spread internationally, then you will definately need the .com version. After that, go for the country code version relevant to the majority of your market, e.g. .co.uk, .ca, .de etc. If you can’t get hold of the .com, your next best bet is the .net or .org, although .org tends to be indicative of a non-profit organisation. These TLDs are the most usable, because they are the most well-known by the generality of Internet users. The more esoteric flavours such as .uk.com, .biz, .info, etc. have limited saturation on the web and attract lower value. They also tend to be more expensive to renew registration.
