Alisha Shibli

How To Choose The Perfect Domain Name For Your Website

How important do you think a domain name is?

Here’s the truth—it’s far more important than you are guessing. Picking the right domain name is one of the most important and long-term decisions you’ll make for your business and your overall brand. Reason being, your domain name does a lot more than just being an address for your website. It communicates essential information to both your human visitors and search engine bots.

Fortunately, there are a few tricks and strategies that you can use to better think about your domain name and pick one that hits all the right points. For instance, you can look for strong keywords or use a blog name generator to help you brainstorm and reach your final decision after some research and study.

Why is choosing a domain name such a weighty decision?

Your domain name is your business’ online (and offline) identity. While it is not the sole factor that affects your business’
online success, there are multiple reasons why you must put enough thought before choosing a domain name. Some of them include:

  • A short and unique domain name tends to be memorable—one that is likely to stick with visitors and encourage them to return to your website.
  • Your domain name can communicate to visitors (and search engines) what your business or website might be about. A good domain name is one that communicates this basic information for you.
  • Domain names have an impact on your search engine optimization. A good,  keyword-rich domain name can help you in securing better rankings.
  • Changing your domain name in the future can be an extremely tedious and painful process. It costs money and you lose all your earned SEO juice. Not to mention it hurts your overall branding.

Names hold immense power, and this is as true for a domain name as it is for anything else. Picking a domain name, therefore, should be a careful process and one that compels you to look at every possible available option before you settle on a winner.

How to choose a winning domain name for your website?

This simple three-step process will help you think in the right direction of making a careful, well thought-out selection. Now, these aren’t strict rules that you absolutely must follow. Choosing a domain name isn’t a science; it’s an art. These steps will get you thinking in the right direction and help you choose the best domain name for your website.

1. Incorporate at least one keyword that represents your business

There are innumerable ways to start generating ideas for your domain name. For one, you can simply base your website’s domain name on your own name or your business’ name. However, a key ingredient of a good domain name is a strong and relevant keyword.

Now you may wonder how will you build a strong brand without including its name in the domain name, which is fair. For
successful, long-term branding the name of the brand must be everywhere as it helps in brand recall. This where domain extensions come into play.

Over the last couple of years, the Internet space has expanded significantly giving birth to new, industry-specific domain
extensions such as .TECH, .SITE, .ONLINE, .SPACE, .FUN, etc. This allows you to incorporate the key ingredient in your domain name recipe.

Using keywords in your domain name is important for the same reasons as using them in your content is. Keyword-rich domain names fit perfectly on the anchor text giving you better SEO rankings over time and helping your site rank higher in search engine results. Moreover, an industry-specific domain name helps potential visitors get an idea of your site’s niche.

2. Use a domain name generator to look for viable options

Once you have a few ideas, or keywords, put them in a domain name generator and let it help you brainstorm ideas for your winning domain name. A lot of domain name generators suggest names that are already taken so, try and be careful about that.

Using a name generator that gives you options that are available can not only help you brainstorm but also help you understand whether the options you’re looking at are available or not.

All you need to do is enter all the relevant keywords into the search box. For instance, let’s assume you are starting a blog on how to build a successful eCommerce website. For your keywords, you have settled on “eCommerce help”. Put these keywords in the search bar and browse through the results.

3. Select your domain name based on simple criteria

If you are at this step, then you probably have a list of prospective domain names and are ready to shortlist a few for final screening. This process is more subjective in nature—after all, it is important you love the domain name you are choosing. However, to ensure you make the right choice, there are some simple criteria that can help you make the decision.

Pick a domain name that is:

  • Short and simple – long, confusing, and clunky names are difficult to remember and easier to mistype. www.johnsmith.site is easier to remember than www.johnsmithspersonalwebsite.site.
  • Unique and memorable – the more creative your domain name, the more memorable it will be. However, it must still be clear and concise.
  • Voice search friendly – always avoid hyphens and numbers because they are confusing when spoken aloud. If your user were to say your name to Alexa or Siri, would he be able to say it easily without any difficulties? That’s a test you should do before selecting your domain name.

Conclusion

Choosing a domain name for your website can seem intimidating at first. After all, it is an extremely important decision—one that will affect the future of your business and overall brand building. However, you will find that a little research and the right tools can help make this process a lot easier.

Check out our Domain Name Search today to find the best domain name for your site today!

About the Author:

Alisha Shibli

Alisha Shibli is a Senior Content Marketing & Communication Specialist at Radix, the registry behind some of the most successful new domain extensions, including .STORE and .TECH.

by Alisha Shibli's.

3 comments on “How To Choose The Perfect Domain Name For Your Website

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *