When you plan to have a website, you first think on what its name should be and obviously you want a killer domain name. More than 10,000 domains are registered every day and good domain names are becoming increasingly rare. Consider yourself fortunate for living in an age where mainstream internet is still in its teenage and only with a little effort you may be able to find plenty of good domain name variables out there. What’s challenging is to find a domain that is relevant, intuitive, memorable and, above all, available. Here are tips to help you find the perfect domain name for your precious website.
1. Find a Memorable Domain Name
With such innumerable domain names on the internet, it’s not hard to get lost in the crowd. The only thing that can help you here to stand out is to craft a domain name that is catchy or witty. Uniquely odd domain has the ability to get attention and be remembered. For example, if you have an online cloth shop, a domain name like CrackRags.com or FashionBoom.com is more memorable than BestClothesStore.com, because the latter is not unique and many other cloth shop may have domain names with a little difference because of which customers won’t remember yours exactly. Consider incorporating some lingo in the industry in the domain rather than common words that have been used already. Uncommon words have another benefit of not being used commonly and so, being available for domain registration and you can create a shorter domain with them.
2. Prefer .com
Per se the most popular Top Level Domain (TLD) is .com. Some of the other more common TLDs to consider are: .net, .info, .org and .biz. However, majority of the internet users will put a .com at the end of the domain name they remember. It’s important that your potential customers should remember your extension and not just the domain name; otherwise they would go astray and even reach your competitors. Several people are not aware of other extensions and think that there is only .com at the end of domains. Therefore, if you don’t have a .com extension, you may miss out a lot of traffic to your site.
3. Take Misspellings into Consideration
For the protection of your brand and prevention of misdirected traffic, consider registering common misspellings of your domain name. If you misspell your domain, there are chances that other people may also misspell it. It’s a common occurrence that domains with double letters in them are misspelled as the second letter is usually omitted. For example, it’s a good idea that along with a domain ClothesStore.com, you should buy ClothStore.com or ClotheStore.com. More dangerously, typosquatters and your competitors are always on the lurk. Therefore, protect your site by buying the misspelled domains. Once you own them, you just have to direct them to your homepage.
4. Purchase Other TLDs
Paying an additional $15+ per year for other TLDs is also not a bad idea to regain the traffic you are losing. Your competitors and cybersquatters are always after ways to enhance their profits and you also must do that. If you don’t register other TLDs of your domain, your competitors might. You should also take care of setting those TLDs with your email hosting provider so that mails with the other TLDs are directed to your inbox.
5. Keep it Short
It’s needless to say that the shorter the better. People find it easier to remember shorter domain names and that’s a strong reason why you should keep it short.
6. Avoid Using Numbers and Hyphens
You might have seen a number of domains with hyphens or numbers in them. However, it’s recommended that you avoid using them. It’s natural that when you see that the domain name you longed for is taken and just by inserting a hyphen or number, you can get it. Again, inserting such odd characters increase your chances to lose traffic. It’s because most of the times, your visitors forget inserting the character and may be directed to the other domain you missed. The hyphen also may be missed out when you tell your domain name over the phone, for example. The same thing is true for a number with a phonetic similarity to a word, like 2 or 4. So, avoid that.
7. Use a Domain for Promotion
While running a promotion, consider buying a domain that suits the name of the promotion and use it as a landing page. This way, if you want to advertise for that promotion, you can mention that promotional domain name so that it clings your audience’s memory even better.
More Tips
- You may want to protect your personal information from the public whois records while registering your domain. In that case, you should consider having domain privacy.
- If you are not deliberately registering for a misspelled domain, ensure that you check the spelling of the domain BEFORE buying it.
- If your domain is just a side project and not your business name, and you just want to test it to see how it works, it’s best to get a 1 year term. This will prevent you from overpaying for a domain that doesn’t go well.
- If you get a new business idea, make sure first to check domain availability of your new business before registering the business name legally or start printing fliers or t-shirts. If in the future you plan to sell the business, you will gain more profit if you also have the same domain as that of your business name.
- If you register the domain for a year but are not sure if you will remember to renew it after a year, ensure that you set a reminder just a few weeks before your domain becomes due for renewal; thus you won’t lose it upon expiry. You can even set an auto-renew method if you are concerned about forgetting.
- If everything else fails and you are not able to find an ideal domain, you can always choose to have a commonly known single-term zany domain. This technique has been proved useful for some companies.
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