Use A Domain Name Generator For Inspiration
Feeling stuck on choosing a domain name? You can pull ideas from Shopifys free domain name generator. Load the tool, plug in a keyword, and well return popular and alternative domain names you can use for your business.
Sneak peek: Say you want to sell hats, here are a few options available right now:
Not the right domain name for you? The domain name generator also shows alternative options.
Picking The Best Place To Register Your Domain
Once youve picked out a domain name, you need to choose a domain registrar, which is the company where youll purchase it. When shopping around for a registrar, here are a few things to keep an eye on:
- Domain transfers. Check out the registrars transfer policy. If its complicated or expensive, keep looking.
- Pricing. Some companies offer lower prices for the first year and then increase them when its time for renewal. You may even be locked into a multi-year contract.
- Expiration policy. You dont buy a domain so much as rent it. If you forget to renew the lease, someone else can take it from you. Look for a registrar that offers automatic renewals and a grace period.
- Domain privacy protection. As a website owner, youre required to add your personal information to a public database. Domain privacy protection hides your primary contact information to help keep your identity secure.
- Subdomains. You dont have to register subdomains separately. However, youll want to ensure that your registrar makes it easy to add subdomains to your site.
There are plenty of registrars you can use. However, sometimes it makes sense to register your domain through your hosting provider.
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How To Choose An Expired Domain For Your Niche Site
When a domain expires, usually it is put on the table for registration again or goes listed to any of the auction websites.
If you are in a hurry, see how Jon Haver from chose an expired domain, check the video below.
If you have some time on your hands, and want to learn the metrics in details, keep reading the article.
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What Is The Average Domain Name Price How Much Does It Typically Cost
There are hundreds of domains available on the market. A top-level domain is the part of a domain that follows the dot, for example, com or inc. A domain will either be a generic top-level domain such as .org and .net, or a country code top-level domains like .us and .fr.
As the Internets popularity grew throughout the years, so did the need for domains. This resulted in the introduction of new gTLDs, such as .blog and .music, which actually help the audience to understand the type of content they are about to see before the website has even loaded.
Due to the variety on offer, it can be difficult to work out a common price for an online domain name, however, there will be a typical price tag for each TLD.
The newer TLDs such as .club, .online, and .site can cost anywhere between $10 and $25, whereas traditional TLDs like .com, .net, and .org are usually priced between $6 and $15.
The most expensive range of TLDs includes .inc, .protection, and .security, which can cost in the region of £2,000. These domains are more expensive due to their keywords and brandability.
Make Your Domain Name Memorable
Strive for domain names that are short, easy to remember, easy to type, and easy to say. This is valuable for word-of-mouth advertising because those visitors will need to visit your domain directly, but it also matters for processing fluency. An implicit cognitive bias, processing fluency is the concept that we remember and have more positive associations with things that we can easily say and easily think about, and that includes pronounceability in our own minds. So, stay away from domain names that include numbers or other non-standard characters, use unusual spelling, or are longer than about 15 characters or so.
Because of search engine’s growing reliance on accessibility and usability as a ranking factor, the easier a domain is to read for humans, the better it is for search engines.
From “15 SEO Best Practices for Structuring URLs”
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Always Register Your Domain Name Yourself
Its a good idea to not let anyone else register a domain name for you. Even though its slightly less hassle that way , it can lead to trouble later on.
If someone else registers the domain, youre giving them a hold over you and your website. If you ever want to move away from their services, you can encounter trouble in terms of them not being too eager to transfer the domain over to you and give you full control of it.
Just to name a few bad things that can happen: They may take an awfully long time to complete the transfer, they may try to extort some fees from you to do that, or they may decline completely .
Plus, perhaps most importantly, if the agency/person goes bankrupt or loses access to the domain registrar for whatever reason, you could lose your domain name entirely.
Long story short, always register your domains on your own. Its not that difficult anyway. Heres our step-by-step guide.
Dont Sweat It Too Much If Your Perfect Domain Name Is Taken
If the domain name you really desire is already taken, this is not the end of the world. Sometimes, you can actually still get your hands on it.
Heres what you can do:
- If the domain name is not in use , then theres a very good chance the owner only bought it to sell it later on. Youll likely find some contact information on that parked website. If theres no info, use who.is and get the owners email.
- If theres a website on the domain, you can still try your luck and contact the owner asking if theyre willing to sell the domain off. Low chance of success here, but still worth a try.
- If the domain is completely empty and theres no contact info to be found, try looking through known domain-flipping marketplaces, such as GoDaddys marketplace , Sedo, SnapNames, or Flippa.
Buying an existing domain name is a different process from buying a new one, so it requires some additional caution. We talk about that in No. 13.
One more note, domains you buy from someones hands cost MONEY . Sometimes good money! A safe estimate here would be a minimum of $250, but more like $1,000 or more.
If you cant afford that, dont worry too much either Which brings me to:
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The Convertkit Domain Story
And just for the record, I’ve broken every single ones of these rules in the pastexcept the last one. I witnessed ConvertKit.com change their name to Seva.com recently, only to see them switch back to ConvertKit.com after they realized the full meaning of the word Seva. You can read all about that here.
And for the record, I like the domain ConvertKit.com way better than Seva.com anyway, since it follows one of my rules I outlined earlier: Try to have a domain that makes it obvious to your audience what your website is about. ConvertKit speaks to their core product, Seva did not.
Unfortunately, they didn’t ask my advice before they did that.
Be Careful When Buying Existing Domain Names
As I mentioned a couple of points above, buying an existing domain name is a bit different from buying a new one. First of all, since its not new, this means it already has a history. And you can never be entirely sure what that history is.
- On the bright side, the domains history may give you a boost in Google since youre not starting from scratch Google already knows the domain.
- But, on the flip side, if the domain has featured any kind of non-kosher stuff , then it may be banned from Google entirely.
Buying your domain from a marketplace such as Flippa gives you some safety, since every domain is validated at least in the most basic way. However, to make things a bit safer, you should also perform checks of your own.
First, do a manual check by going to Google and searching for:
site:YOURDOMAIN.com
This will tell you whether Google has any pages indexed from that domain. Finding anything is a good sign. It means the domain isnt banned. Not finding anything doesnt have to be a deal-breaker, though.
- If the domain is blank no website then theres nothing for Google to find in the first place.
- However, if there is a website but Google cant see it , this is a red flag.
You can also do checks via tools such as bannedcheck.com and ismywebsitepenalized.com. But also keep in mind that these things are not foolproof. Consider them helpers.
But we can still do more:
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Avoid Repeated Letters Numbers Or Anything Hard To Type Or Remember
When prospects type in your domain name, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to get it right with no typos, inaccuracies, or second-guessing.
That means, generally, you should avoid repeated letters, numbers, symbols like dashes, and other additions.
So, names like content-writing-123.com or contentteacherr.com or something similar are going to be difficult for your prospects to remember and type correctly.
You want short, simple, sweet, and memorable not long, complicated, and finicky.
A Good Domain Name Is Easy To Remember
You can understand a good domain name immediately, remember it well and type it without errors. Domains are specifically entered if they are burned into the mind of the user. Most of them memorize their favorite websites and type them into the address bar of the browser or they search for them using a search engine.
Brevity is the soul of witThe shorter the domain name, the easier it is to remember. Still, shorter doesn’t mean better. An abbreviation made up of four or more letters can be difficult to remember. You should therefore be careful with abbreviations or complicated structures and choose your own domain name that matches the website content.
No special charactersSo that the domain name is easy to remember, it can only consist of numbers and letters. The only allowed special character is the hyphen. This is used as a link between two or more words that represent the website name, for example “www.server-technology.com”.
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Go For Brandable Domain Names
No domain name strategy list would be complete without talking about the importance of branding.
77% of customers make purchases based on the brand attached to the product. Whats even crazier is that 90% of those decisions are thought to be made subconsciously based on brand associations with positive feelings.
Examples of highly-branded domain names include Amazon, IBM, and Tesla.
Unfortunately, choosing a brandable domain name isnt quite cut and dry as our other tips, but a good test is to say it out loud and see if it sounds like a brand. For example:
- Does: lularoe.com
- Does: doreimefashion.com
- Does not: doreimefasolatido.com
But if youre struggling, there are marketplaces for this, albeit at a pretty penny. Brandpa is one such marketplace. Its lowest ticket item will run you $1,000.
On the plus side, you get a logo with your purchase. Something users form an impression on within the first ten seconds of viewing.
Which Domain Extension Is The Best
You can never go wrong with a .com domain extension. Try to get a domain name that keeps your business brand consistent and also has a .com extension.
Depending on where you live, other extensions also might be good options. For example, if your business is based out of the United Kingdom, it never hurts to have your localized domain extension in this case, .co.uk in addition to a .com.
So, using the above example, here are two great options:
- highstreetplumbing.com
- highstreetplumbing.co.uk
If you can’t find a .com available for the domain name you want, your next best option is to choose a .net. If your business is a nonprofit, try for an .org. These are the three most prominent TLD choices. If it fits your business, you could also try out some of the newer domain extensions. You can find the full list of currently available domain extensions here.
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What Is A Domain Name
A domain name is a string of text that maps to a numeric , used to access a website from client software. In plain English, a domain name is the text that a user types into a browser window to reach a particular website. For instance, the domain name for Google is google.com.
The actual address of a website is a complex numerical IP address , but thanks to , users are able to enter human-friendly domain names and be routed to the websites they are looking for. This process is known as a DNS lookup.
Creating Domain Name Possibilities
Now let’s put all of this together and create some domain names. We’re going to say that your website is in the kitchen niche. You cover kitchen designs, recipes, and kitchen gear.
I think the most important thing is your branding, so let’s put that at the forefront. We want our name to be catchy, memorable, and to roll off the tongue. BestKitchenWebsiteEver isn’t a good option.
I have a little formula I like to use for domain names. I like for one word to be keyword-ish. In this case, just the word kitchen is fine. And then I like to have other words that are modifiers around my keyword. Together, these two or three words create a branding.
Here are some examples:
- KitchenMadePerfect.com
And so on.
This type of keyword + modifiers creates some create branding and this is how I recommend that you start brainstorming domain names.
I’ve seen some websites get great results with simple misspellings. TheKitchn.com is an enormous website about the kitchen. But I think that this can be hard to pull off well and could lead to some weird domain names. I don’t recommend it.
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What Is A Business Domain Name
A business domain name is the web address of your business website it’s what you type into your web browser to reach a website. Instead of entering the address of your physical address, you enter the domain name to access your business website.
A domain name stands in for an IP address, which is an unwieldy, hard-to-memorize string of digits unique to a website. A business domain name includes both the portion that’s unique to your business and the extension , such as .com, .net or .org. These suffixes are known as top-level domains .