Avoid Using Hyphens Symbols And Numbers
A very frequent mistake website owners make is stuffing a domain name with unnecessary characters such as hyphens, symbols, and numbers.
All of these make your address longer and less professional instead of making it unique. Whats more, they are hard to pronounce and type. As a result, you will have a much harder time getting your visitors to come back.
But if you desperately need to use a hyphen or a special symbol, limit it to just a single character.
As for numbers, you can use more than one but make sure they are sequential or easily recognizable .
All in all, a perfect domain name is one thats doesnt require any effort on the behalf of the visitor.
If they mistype your domain name thats too complicated and get taken to a This domain doesnt exist page, theyre going to get frustrated and might not even give your brand a second chance.
A Com Tld Boosts Authority
Since most people assume your site’s extension is .com, .com gives your website additional authority and credibility. .com websites make you appear established and trustworthy.
For example, which one are you more likely to trust? A cooltshirts.xyz or a cooltshirts.com? To help you understand it better, are you more comfortable inputting your credit card details in a .xyz website or a .com vs .net website? Personally, I would think twice.
Choose The Easiest To Remember Combination
Domain names came to be because humans have limits on their memory. While you can skip digging into the neuroscience, you should keep these limits in mind when choosing your domain name.
Specifically, the more stress you put on working memory, the more humans struggle to complete tasks. Theres a buffer limitation on the information the working-memory can retain.
And while this seems like a pretty common sense limit, its not as clear-cut as it sounds. How items fall in human memory depends on the items themselves and whether they associate with any other memory systems.
Which means that, although a website address like www.catsdogs.com is significantly longer than www.animalia.com, its probably going to be easier to remember for most people.
Why? Because cats and dogs make up two items, while animalia will require most people to remember three distinct items:
- The word animal.
- The letter i.
- The letter a.
Obviously, this example falls apart if someone has a background in biology, but it illustrates the point I mean to make.
Whats easy to remember isnt always about concision, as recognition can trump concision. The more recognizable the elements of your domain name are, the easier and therefore more usable your address becomes.
As a rule of thumb, try to keep the elements involved limited to no more than seven.
Especially for our next strategy.
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Takeaway: Dont Let A Domain Name Hold Any Of Your Ideas Hostage
Choosing a domain name can be a difficult endeavor due to all the options, but its certainly not impossible. Just look at the billions of websites that exist today, they all had to start where you are starting from right now.
If you follow the advice we provided here and identify which factors are most important to you, you should end up with an excellent domain name. For us, we ended up choosing Opasite.com due to its short length, memorability, ease of spelling, and that it contains the word site which happens to be a keyword of ours as a website design company. But we could have chosen something completely different if there were other criteria we deemed more important to our name. Either way, its vital that you consider all the options and then begin narrowing down those options by following our guidance above. Above all, dont be afraid to experiment with your domain name to find that perfect fit for you and your target audience.
Try For A Different Top Level Domain
If your domain name is not available in the .com extension, try to get a different TLD instead. As long as the current .com domain isnt trademarked or in a similar niche, you could register using .co, .shop, .biz, or other trustworthy TLDs.
To check for trending TLDs, head to NameStat. You can check the biggest selling and fastest growing TLDs to help decide your domain extension.
To see which TLDs to avoid, check Spamhaus, a tool that analyzes the TLDs with the worst reputations, so you can create a trustworthy domain.
Once you find some great ideas, youll want to take the final step in choosing a domain.
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Key Words Yes But Not Too Many
It can be interesting to differentiate yourself by adding a descriptive keyword regarding your activity, your location in your SEO strategy. However beware of not being excessive since it will be heavily penalized by Google.
We will see in points 7 and 13 that many new extensions allow you to have a keyword directly in the extension like .paris, .london, .alsace, .email, .consulting, .archi, .shop, .app
Select A Domain Name That Is Intuitive
A KILLER domain name gives people a clear sense of what a website is about.
And that matters a lot, especially in search results.
Lets say youve just searched for cupcakes and you get the following results:
Which evokes cupcakes the most?
A good domain name hints at what a website does and resonates powerfully with its target audience.
And those two things together can influence click-through-rate A LOT!
Here are some domains that get it right:
- filofax.com Trendy personal organizers.
- Trustworthy, etc,
You can then pop your chosen attributes into a thesaurus to uncover synonyms:
Through this process you should come up with a number of ideas for your domain name.
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Make Sure Its Easy To Remember
Dont forget that word of mouth and search engine marketing both depend on how easy it is to remember your domain name. You dont want to be that company with the incredible website whose name no one can ever remember when the time comes to tell a friend about it. From an SEO point of view, there are a lot of advantages to following best branding practices. Ignoring them, on the other hand, will jeopardize your long-term results.
Acquire Existing Or Expired Domain To Jump Ahead
Last but not least, you might want to think about acquiring an existing domain. Why? Because an existing domain might already have some of the following:
- Authority backlinks. Use a tool like Ahrefs to check existing backlinks.
- High domain authority and domain rating .
- High PageRank. internally.
- Existing traffic and brand.
Even a little boost can get you jump started and ranking faster. You can use a tool like Expired Domains or Flippa domains to find these.
However, you should also be very careful when going with this strategy. First off, make sure to check for any existing trademarks.
Second, if the domain is currently being used by an existing brand that you are trying to acquire, make sure to check out its traffic patterns. A constant downwards trend could possibly mean it was hit by a Google penalty at some point. Or it could simply mean that they stopped working on the domain.
Third, check out the domains current backlinks with Ahrefs Site Explorer tool. If a lot of the backlinks are from spammy sites this is not a good indicator. It could mean that the domain/website owner at some point paid for backlinks or even had a negative SEO attack against it.
Again, when it comes to acquiring an existing domain, make sure to check all aspects of it. If you dont know how, there are plenty of great SEO experts in the community you can hire.
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Acquire An Aged Domain To Jump Ahead
No doubt this sounds contradictory to my previous recommendation.
But wait, hear me out.
As I shared above, domain age is not a ranking signal, but factors like backlinks and page rank most definitely are.
You can accelerate your rankings and traffic by acquiring an old domain or website. It may already have some of these factors in place:
- Relevant backlinks.
Even a little boost in each of these areas can jump-start your domain.
Several websites exist like Expired Domains, Moonsy, and Flippa to help you find aged domains.
These sites will show you how each expired domain measures up for metrics like Domain Authority, Trust Flow, referring domains, and traffic, which can help you narrow down to a domain you like.
But before putting in a bid, its essential to dig deeper.
Firstly, its important to check for traffic trends.
Basically you want a domain with a consistent or growing volume of organic traffic and ranking keywords:
If traffic is in decline, then that could be a sign the website is impacted by negative SEO, or worse still has gotten penalized.
If you find an organic traffic graph like so, then its probably a domain to be avoided.
Secondly, you should ensure the websites backlinks are relevant and clean.
For checking the relevance of links, I like to use Majestic.com.
Im interested in the anchor text. This should be related to the business you are in.
As well, as the topical trust flow which should be passed from categories similar to your line of trade.
How To Choose A Domain Name For Your Blog
Like finding a domain name for a business, choosing a domain name for your blog has many similar steps. But because businesses can start offline, you might not even have a name chosen for your blog yet!
Luckily, this means you have a better chance of finding a blog name and domain name that are a perfect match, but you’ll need to put in some elbow grease to find something unique. According to Blogging.org, there are more than 500 million blogs on the internet. But don’t be discouraged! Here are some steps to help you find the right domain name for you.
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A Complete Guide To Domain Name Ideas
Are you looking for a great set of domain names to make a fortune?
Domain names have long been used as great digital assets to make a fortune. Even today, when anyone can make a website, domain names are still a great investment.
But how do you choose a great domain name especially when so many great ones have already been taken?
This quick guide will show you some great domain name ideas that you can consider for your portfolio.
Heres what you need to know:
Mistake #: Trying To Brand A New Word
We all would like to birth a brandable domain name, but creating a new word is a big mistake for the vast majority of bloggers. Not everyone, mind you, but most. Branding a new word means building an audience for a domain name you coined out of two different words, which most likely only means something to you.
No one knows what the word means when they come to your site. And even if they can figure it out, the extra processing time and thought severely hinders their ability to answer the fundamental question, Is this for me?
And how does that impact you again? Tick, tick, tick and theyre gone.
Not only that, but the potential for misspellings is high when youre using a brandable name.
For the average blogger, trying to brand a domain name like Google or Yahoo or one of those other big domains with a cool, unique company name is a huge mistake. Why?
Because it typically takes millions of dollars and a top-flight ad agency to pull it off. Or it takes an absolutely astonishing level of influence.
Either way, as a beginning blogger, youre simply not equipped to succeed at branding a new word.
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Why Opt For A Brandable Domain
There are many reasons to choose a memorable domain, over a keyword-rich domain, and build a brand around it.
Lets begin with some stats:
Firstly, 77% of customers make purchases based on the brand attached to the product.
Secondly, 90% of those decisions are thought to be made subconsciously based on brand associations with positive feelings.
As youd imagine, its a whole lot easier to build positive brand sentiment when your domain is lego.com as opposed to interlocking-plastic-blocks.com.
Other great examples of highly-branded domain names include Google.com, Zappos.com, and Ikea.com.
Notice anything similar about these names?
Theyre all made up.
In fact, according to Crowdspring, 72% of the best brands are named with made-up words.
But James, youre an SEO guy, why do you suggest choosing a domain name thats fabricated? Good question!
The power of a good brandable domain is that its built for catchiness.
And for search engine performance having a name people remember is VERY important.
Studies have shown that the more people search for a brand name, the higher that brand will rank for non-brand keywords. In fact, branded search volume is so important for SEO that its influence on rankings is greater than even Domain Authority .
Consider also that when you own a unique name, its almost guaranteed youll rank top of search engines for that term.
But heres the thing, theres no exact science to choosing a brandable domain name.
More on that next:
Relevant To Your Market
If you are located in France, it goes without saying that you must have a .FR extension, also if you are selling some products in Italy, it will be necessary to communicate on your .IT domain name.
Beyond your country of residence, you have to think in terms of market opportunity. Where are my clients? If I am in France and also have clients in Switzerland and Belgium, it is absolutely necessary to register my domain in .CH and .BE.
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Type #: Name The Topic
This type of domain names your blog topic.
Examples are lifehacks.org, dailywritingtips.com, nerdfitness.com, and artofmanliness.com. Those domains name what the blogs are about.
Check out nerdfitness.com, for example:
Same thing with artofmanliness.com:
When you see that name, you get a sense right away that theyre targeting men who want to learn more about the essence of being a man. The macho stuff. The ways of a gentleman. Just the vintage look and old photos alone convey the story to the target audience.
Thats a very different feel and a different audience than men who might gravitate more to, say, Mens Health Magazine, which is more focused on mens fitness and wellbeing and the cover usually shows a half-naked guy with killer six-pack abs.
Name the Topic Template
- Daily tips
- Weekly Photography Tips