How to Choose the Best Domain Name (Tips and Tools)

by Megan sashyl Blogger & Content Writer

When planning a website, choosing a domain name is one of the most important steps you will take. The right domain name is necessary to ensure adequate exposure on the internet. It also helps maximize your brand’s exposure and makes it stand out from among the competition.

If you make the choice of a wrong domain name, you may be forced to change it later and this can negatively affect your business, hurting your search rankings and brand. This is why it is extremely important that you choose the right domain name for your website from the very beginning.

But, with more than 300 million domain names, finding the perfect domain name may not be easy, as many of the good ones are already taken. However, in this article, you will find essential tips and tools that will help you pick and register the best domain name for your website.

Tips for choosing the right domain name

A lot of website owners are stuck with the wrong domain name because they didn’t have this guide when they were making their original choice. But the following essential tips will help make your domain name selection process easy.

1. Go with .COM and .CO – There are dozens of domain extensions available today. From clever domain name extensions meant to immediately get across a sense of what the website is about such as .PIZZA and .DESIGN, to simple domain extensions tied to a particular niche or industry. While most of these domain extensions are fine, nothing beats the allure and authenticity of the original .COM and .CO domain extension.

Not only are these extensions popular and memorable, they also account for some of the most successful websites on the internet. You will hardly see a successful online business that is not using these domain extensions. That doesn’t mean that you cannot use other extensions to secure your brand, but if you are looking at holding influence with your website, then it is best you go for these You can also add your geographical region to spice things up, like a co.nz and co.uk. Also, most smartphones and mobile devices automatically come with a .COM button on their keyboard. This underscores the influence of .COM domains in the web industry.

Of course, getting the domain name of your choice with these extensions may be difficult, as your preferred domain might have been taken, but if you can get a bit creative with the words that make up your domain, you may be able to get something good.

2. Make it easy to spell, recall and pronounce – The best domain names are those that can easily be spoken and typed. Your website could be successful if you choose a domain name that your users will have no problem spelling, remembering and pronouncing. This means going for a simple yet unique domain name. When choosing a domain name, avoid complex words or words that are spelled different across countries. You never know when you will have to say your domain name over the phone to a client, so you want something that they will have no difficulty understanding and spelling. Choosing a complex domain name for your website is the best way to lose visitors fast.

3. Use keywords – Keywords play an important a role in domain names, as they do in website content. Keywords are visibility enhancers that boost how search engines and human users see your website. By using relevant keywords in your domain name, search engines can easily understand what your website is about and return it in results for relevant searches. Together with high quality content, a keyword-enhanced domain name can help your website rank better in Google SERPs.

It may be difficult to get a domain name that contains your relevant keywords, so you may have to get creative with your arrangements. The key is to make it so that users and search engines can tell what your website is about without making it too complicated. For instance, a www.discountdomains.co.nz/email-hosting already tells you what to expect from the site – cheap domains and email hosting services

4. Keep it short – The best domain names are usually short and not more than four syllables. Even if you are adding a keyword to your domain name, ensure that you maintain the standard length so that you don’t end up confusing your users. If possible, try to make your domain name less than 15 characters. Anything longer will be difficult for users to remember and spell. If you brand name is quite long, you can always abbreviate it when using it as a domain name.

5. Be unique and memorable – To catch the attention of the type of customers you need, your domain name should be unique and memorable. There are millions of businesses similar to yours online, so you need something that makes you stand out from the rest. You can achieve this by using a unique and memorable domain name. However, make sure that when you are thinking up a memorable domain name, go for something that will work for your brand and make sense to your visitors.

6. Avoid numbers, hyphens and strange characters – It is never a good idea to include hyphens, numbers and strange characters in your domain name. These are features normally linked with spam domains and tricky websites, which you don’t want to be associated with. It is one thing to be unique, but not to the detriment of your online business and brand. Another problem with using these characters is that it can be spelled wrongly by your visitors, leading them to the wrong website and causing you to lose potential customers.

7. Do proper research – After coming up with the perfect domain name, it is important to check that there is no legal issue associated with it. You don’t want to pick a domain name only to be accused of theft, copyright infringement or another trademark-related issue. If you choose a domain name without doing adequate research, you may end up losing it in the future if it is in violation of someone else’s rights. When this happens, you stand the risk of losing your search page rankings, brand reputation and even most of your customers.

The domain name war between IT giant Microsoft and a young blogger in Microsoft vs. MikeRoweSoft is a good example of domain name conflict that you should try to avoid. You can check on WHOIS records to find out if there are issues with the domain name of your choice. This way, you can avoid future conflict. If you are finding it difficult to come up with the ideal domain name, there are several domain selection tools that you can use to help come up with a good domain name.

8. Leave room for expansion – It is a good thing to choose a domain name that reflects your niche. It helps visitors and customers easily understand what your website is about. However, there are situations when this is not a good idea. Using a domain name that is tied to your niche or industry makes it difficult to branch out into other areas of business.

For example, an auto repair shop using autorepairs.com may decide to venture into car sales but the domain name autorepairs.com can prevent people from knowing that the company is also in the business of selling cars. Unless you are absolutely certain that you will not introduce other products and services that are unrelated to your current niche, it is a smarter idea to go for a domain name that does not restrict your brand.

9. Protect yourself– A lot of businesses own multiple domain extensions of their domain name. They do this to protect their brand. It is very easy for an unscrupulous business to buy another extension of your exact domain name to piggyback on your success. This can cause huge problems down the line especially when the other business begins to offer low-quality products and services. After coming up with the ideal domain name for your business, it is a good idea to buy other popular extensions of the same domain name, this way; you secure your brand and protect your reputation. It is very easy to associate one website with multiple domain names so that a user will land on the same page regardless of the domain extension used.

Apart from protecting your brand, it is also important that you take steps to protect yourself. When you buy a domain name, your personal information is made available via WHOIS records; this information can be stolen by thieves and used for criminal purposes. A good idea is to add domain privacy to your domain name. Domain privacy is an optional add-on that keeps your personal information secure from the prying eyes of the public.

10. Don’t overpay for a domain name – A domain name is one of the many aspects of the internet that is ridiculously cheap. You can get your ideal domain name for just a few dollars; at most, you will find that the price is a bit higher depending on the popularity of the domain name extension you are going for.

If you choose your ideal domain name and find out that you have to pay between hundreds to thousands of dollars, then you are probably buying from a domain broker. If you can afford to pay this amount for the domain name of your choice, then by all means go ahead, but you can also consider changing the arrangement of the words that make up the domain name to get a cheaper one or consider using a different domain name extension. You can also explore sites like that offer cheaper alternatives with reliable hosting service.

Wrapping up

If you are starting a website for the first time, or planning on launching a new website, this article will help you make the right choice for a domain name. However, if you are not happy with the one you already own, all is not lost. You can simply select one that you prefer and add it to your existing website. This way, you will not need to move your website and will still retain the page rankings and customers you got using the other domain name.

That’s all. I hope this article will help you in your choice for a new domain name, and that you end up choosing the right one for your website and business.