How to pick domain names

A quick guide on choosing a powerful website address

Intro

One of the first steps when deciding to invest in a website is to register a domain name. This is a fairly simple task but to do well takes a little time and research. Below are a few simple rules we feel important when choosing a domain name.

Keep to the point

Make your domain relevant to your company. Ideally you should register a domain which is your company name. For example, if your company is Fresh Start Removals Ltd, you should try and register www.freshstartremovals.com. It is also important to take into account relevant keywords which describes what your business does or sells.

Short & Sweet

Keep your domain short. The shorter your domain name the easier it is for visitors to remember, the easier it is for your visitors to type, and the easier it is to say.
If you're an online business, the chances are your logo will consist of your web address. Logos should be contained with a small space and a long domain will make this almost impossible.

Keywords

Choose a domain name which contains keywords related to your website. If you offer wedding flower services based in Leicester, then try and choose a domain name that contains the words 'wedding', 'flowers' and/or 'Leicester'. But remember not to get carried away and try and list lots of keywords in the domain.

Be unique

Any company with an ounce of common sense will have a website of some shape or form. There are an estimated 110 Million website each with a domain name. Try and stand out with play-on-words, humor and originality. It may take some creative thinking and a little time but could reap benefits. Would Google.com have been as popular if it was called TheSeachEngineCompany.com?

Hyphens and Numbers

Unless necessary try and stay clear of using hyphens and numbers. Both hyphens and numbers make it hard to give your domain name verbally and falls down on being easy to remember or type. You may also loose valuable traffic due to incorrect spelling. For example, if your website is plumbers-4u.com, you may loose visitor to plumbersforyou.com who are most likely to be competitors. Another factor when using 'text style' domains is it can often give the appearance of a cheap product, however this may be a positive in some situations.

Registering

You may have in your head the perfect domain, but when it comes to registering it, there's a good chance it'll already be taken. Don't think that just because there isn't a live website using a particular domain that the domain is free. All too often, companies register multiple domains to; stop competitors using similar domains, they wish to use them at a later date, or to sell on for a profit.
Once you have a list of domains your feel are suitable, you need to find out if they're available. A great place to do this is at www.who.is. When you've decided on a available domain, don't hang around, register is as soon as possible before someone else swoops in. R&G Design offer a registration service or feel free to do it yourself. See our links page for recommendations.

Top Tip: Register Mobile Device domains now!

Mobile Devices with internet access such as the Apple iPhone are quickly becoming more popular. In the near future, all website will either; be designed with Mobile Devices closely in mind or have a secondary mobile device only version of the original website. These streamlined versions of the full desktop website often run off a separate domain such as www.mywebsite.mobi. We highly recommend website owners register these .mobi domain now before it's too late.

Add a comment

Comments

Be the first to comment