Member Article

Choosing Your Domain Name in 2016 by Opace

Choosing the right domain name for your website is a critical step in forming your online presence. You need to think carefully about how you want your domain, and indeed your brand, to be perceived. Typically, domains and brand names go hand in hand, and the article below from Opace provides a up-to-date guide to choosing your domain name in 2016.

What is a domain name?

It may seem obvious to any technical and business-savvy readers but many users who browse the net have never come across the term before, so before going any further we thought it would be an ideal opportunity just to clarify what this is.

So, the domain name is simply the first part of the website address that appears in the browser search bar, for example:

www.mywebsite.com

The best analogy for a domain name is that it’s like a street address for a house or business. The part that comes after the forward slash “/” is the folder or page, which would be analogous to a house/business number:

www.mywebsite.com/folder/

For any domain that can be an unlimited amount of folders and pages.

Where to purchase domain names?

You can use websites like Domainr to see the availability of a domain name, and then purchase it through popular sites such as GoDaddy, 1and1 and NameCheap. It is worth looking at multiple sites, as some will offer better deals than others for a particular domain. Some also offer different availability, especially when it comes to new top level domains (nTLDs) which we discuss further on in this article.

Ensure your domain is easy to remember

The first thing is to make sure your domain name is easy to remember and type. Customers want their online searching or shopping experience to be as smooth and quick as possible. Using words like ‘xpress’ rather than ‘express’ may mean they have to spend longer trying to find your site, and may even just give up altogether for one of your competitors instead as it’s less easy to remember.

Keep your domain short

Along these same lines, keep your domain as short as possible. This means that users are more likely to remember and share your domain name. Having a long and complex domain name won’t be doing you an favours.

Where possible, avoid numbers and hyphens

It is easy for customers to forget to type in the dash when searching for a domain name, and the same customers, upon hearing the name of your domain, may not know whether it is spelt ‘4’ or ‘four’ when it comes to numbers.

Use keywords for SEO (but only where it makes sense)

Try and use keywords in your domain name. While this isn’t possible all the time, it can help to improve your ranking on search engines. For example, if you are a florist called Floral, a domain like floralflorist.co.uk would be ideal in terms of SEO (search engine optimisation). It contains three essential ingredients – the brand name “floral” (could also be a keyword), the keyword “florists” and also the location “.co.uk”.

While this particular domain may not be available, you can use keyword research tools such as Google’s KeywordPlanner to help identify other related keywords and combine these to form a domain name that is available. However, it is more important to focus on building your brand, so don’t try and squeeze in keywords just for the sake of SEO; there are plenty of other ways to optimise your site for search engine rankings.

Make your domain name catchy

You don’t always have to go for the obvious choice to have an impact; take Apple for example - the majority of people worldwide are more likely to think of the company rather than the fruit when they hear ‘Apple’ now. It’s short, easy to say, quick to type, and memorable. They have now built a global brand around the word ‘apple’.

Consider pre-owned domains

If you’re looking to purchase a domain that is already in use, or is already owned but waiting to be sold, you can use websites such as sedo.com. However, use caution when buying a domain name that has a history. It is recommended doing detailed research of the history before purchasing a previously owned domain as it may have been labelled as a malicious site, attracted a Google penalty, become known for spam or flagged as conducting illegal activities.

If purchasing a pre-owned domain name is right for you, then there are services available, such as Whois from domaintools which allow you to investigate information such who owns the domain and how long it has been registered (the domain age). There are also services such as the Internet Archive; Wayback Machine which will allow you to browse through stored snapshots of the domain name in question, so you can get a complete and visual history of the website to see what content has been live on the domain. You might want to consider using link research tools such as https://moz.com/researchtools/ose to see exactly which other sites (if any) are linking to the domain. This will help you to identify whether the links pointing to the domain are relevant to your website or appear spammy, something which is crucial to SEO and determining the value of the domain. Using a combination of these tools can be very powerful when making your decision.

Don’t discount new top-level domains (nTLDs)

It may be worth considering a new top-level domain name at this point - rather than mywebsite.com, you could try www.mywebsite**.company**, www.mywebsite**.agency**, www.mywebsite**.blog**, www.mywebsite**.hotel**, and so on.

There are so many options available in 2016 we’re no longer tied into TLDs such as .com, .net, .org and .co.uk. In the not too distant future there are plans to release .shop and .store domains which will be great for eCommerce website. For a full list of nTLDs see: http://www.1and1.co.uk/new-top-level-domains.

Just be aware that each of these extensions has a different meaning, for example ‘.co’ is for a company, whereas ‘.org’ is typically for nonprofit organisations, and if you’re serious about building your company and business you still need the ‘.com’ extension in order to protect your brand as it is still the most popular and well-known. If you’re based in the UK, you will probably also want the ‘.co.uk’ extension.

Build and protect your brand

We’ve said it above, but your domain name is your brand, and carries with it a lot of weight and presence in the online world. As well as performing the check above, it is also recommended to check that there are no trademarks or copyrights against your chosen domain – this applies whether you are buying it new or used. It is worth paying a small fee beforehand to be sure, rather than deal with the potential cost of legal fees at a later date, not to mention the hassle of having to change your whole brand.

If you are trying to build a global company it may be that you want to protect your brand, in which case you may want to purchase all possible extensions of your new domain to limit competitors and help redirect customers who misspell. Again, if this is the case, be sure to carry out thorough checks on all the domains you are looking at.

Conclusion

There are many factors to consider when picking the right domain name for you; however the most important thing is to make sure it fits in line with your brand. Try and follow suit with brands like apple.com, virgin.comor next.com; these are all common, everyday words that are easy to type, easy to remember and adds to a smoother feel to a brand. Keep your domain short and sweet, and be sure to do all your research beforehand. We hope you found this guide from Opace useful and found some useful nuggets of information that will help you to choose the perfect domain name in 2016.

Image credit: https://www.flickr.com

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by David Bryan .