MANILA, Philippines—As the first thing customers will see, choosing a domain name for a small business is when the competition begins. This is also the reason why it takes forever to make an indelible one that truly mirrors both you and the service you bring.
These eight guidelines from GoDaddy are designed to help you pick a domain name that is appropriate for your company and will flourish for years.
Keep it Simple
Allow yourself to include simple as your guiding principle when picking a name as it can never go wrong. If your domain name has a bizarre structure or is difficult to type, people may misspell it and not find you on the internet. Instead of using “u” for “you” or “c” for “see,” use proper spellings for words. If you have to explain how to spell your domain name, it may be too confusing.
Shorter the better
Picking a domain name shouldn’t be complicated; less is more. Consider six to fourteen characters to the left of the dot as a target. The fewer characters in your domain name, the easier it is to type, pronounce, and share. There is also less risk of losing visitors who type or misspell it incorrectly.
By doing so, they also allow more of the URL address to appear in search engine list results, which can help customers find your website hassle-free.
Add keywords to your domain name
One way to stand out is to include keywords that typify your company and the products or services it offers. This will enable customers in figuring out the nature of your brand.
By way of example, if you own a specialized cake business, you might want to register a domain name that includes the words “specialized” and “cakes.”
Include keywords that people might type in when searching for your product or service to improve your search engine results and be more noticeable.
Mention your location
Attract your target market by considering to include your location in your domain name by using a domain name extension that corresponds to your location, such as.ph. or a.sg domain name, informing customers that you are a business located in a country. This is efficacious in catching the eye of people who want to do business with companies based in their country.
With this, customers will be able to find you geographically more easily if you add your location before or after the dot. They will quickly realize they are dealing with someone local and supporting a local business.
Images courtesy of GoDaddy
Avoid numbers and hyphens
Exclude hyphens and numbers since they can be perplexing. If your domain name is spoken, it may not be immediately clear to listeners whether you are using a number or spelling out the number as a word.
If you include a hyphen, users might overlook it and write your URL incorrectly or they might recall the hyphen but place it inappropriately. In either case, a potential consumer is lost since they were unable to find your website.
Make it unforgettable
There is a lot of competition due to the abundance of businesses operating online, so the key thing to keep in mind is to stand out by being iconic and engaging. Having a catchy and memorable domain name is essential. An easy-to-remember custom domain name will help to encourage word-of-mouth advertising and help spread your brand faster.
If you cannot get your domain name down to one memorable word, you might want to think about joining two words together, until the magic happens.
Consider all your domain name options
The internet’s been around for decades, but there’s still a strong bias towards choosing a .com domain name extension. So, if you can, you can try and register a .com domain address.
But if the .com domain name you want isn’t available, there are a variety of industry-specific domain extensions available, such as .co, .net, .org, .life, .online and .news. There are also extensions that can clearly show the nature of the business such as .photography, .shop, .club and .accountant.
Images courtesy of GoDaddy
Safeguard your brand
Retaining your brand safe is more pivotal than almost anything. To help further protect your brand, consider registering your domain name with various domain extensions, as well as misspelled versions of your domain name, if you think that might be helpful. This can help to prevent competitors from registering different versions of your domain name, and then using them to pull traffic away from your website.
Once you have found the perfect domain name/s for your business, it is important to check that the name is not trademarked or copyrighted by another company
It can also help to check that the domain name you want is available on social media sites, by checking Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to make sure the name is not already taken, and helpful to have the same name across your website and social platforms for consistency.
Be sure to keep your domain names current and registered, as you do not want the registrations to lapse. To prevent domain names from expiring, providers like GoDaddy offer automatic renewals.
To learn more about GoDaddy, visit www.GoDaddy.com.