Claim Your Domain Name In All Possible Ways
Make sure your domain name represents you everywhere. It would be a shame if you found a great name, but it was unavailable as a Twitter handle. You want your brand to be consistently represented, so check if your name is available on all the platforms you wish to use.
Another option to consider are possible alternatives to your desired name, including potential misspellings. If possible, purchase those domains too. This will decrease the chance of another company choosing a similiar name. You can imagine how confusing that might be for visitors! A tip: use the other domain names to redirect to your website. This will ensure visitors always land on your website. Even if they misspell your domain name.
Keep It Short But Unique
One great way to keep a domain name memorable is to keep it short. Try to keep the length of the domain name within 15 characters. Itll be challenging for the users to remember domain names longer than this.
Besides, people can end up making typos while entering long domain names, and going to another website. For this reason, also try to keep your domain name unique.
Domains Should Be Short And Easy To Spell
A short domain name is easier to remember and easier to type. If your domain is more than about 12 characters then the chances are fewer people will remember where to find your website after their first visit.
You should also avoid using alternative or unusual spellings in your domain name, as this too has the potential to confuse people. For example, a punning baking blogger might consider thebreadryeter.com as a domain, but it wouldnt be a good choice as people who hear it spoken aloud could easily end up visiting thebreadwriter.com.
If a domain name youre thinking of buying could easily be mistaken as being something else, you should probably choose another one.
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Make It Easy To Type And Pronounce
Sure, your blog name is unique, but if no one knows how to pronounce it or type it as a URL, your traffic numbers might suffer as a result.
If a domain name is confusing, it’s more likely that users will have typos and get lost as they try to find your blog. Make it easy for them, and avoid hurting your traffic numbers, by choosing a simple, clear domain name.
Creating A Brandable Domain Name
In this section, youll discover how to get inspired andcreate your brandable domain name. At this stage, its better to come up with ahandful of potential ideas.
#4 Choose a short name
Short names work best for several reasons. For starters,theyre easy to remember, spell, and type.
You only have to think of the most popular sites likeGoogle, Bing, Yahoo, Amazon, Apple, to realize there must be a logical reasonfor choosing a short domain name.
However, it might be challenging to come up with a one-wordname unless you create a new word.
#5 Make it catchy and memorable
Two-word combos work particularly well. Here are a fewexamples:
- BloggingWizard
- FunnelOverload
- ProfitBlitz
I think this comes down to the rhythm when you say the name.Try saying a few out loud, and youll see what I mean. And because it soundsgood, it sticks. Its catchy and memorable.
#6 Check your competitors
Its always worth checking what sort of name yourcompetitors are using. If you examine a niche or industry, youll see theyoften follow patterns.
For example, in the tech industry, theres TechRadar and TechCrunch. And in the beard grooming niche, youll find Beardbrand and Beardoholic.
Note: Did you notice those examples all happen to be two-word combos?
#7 Brainstorm
Try and get ten words down on paper. And if you wish, askyour friends and family to throw in a few ideas too.
#8 Try naming formulas
Over the years, Adam has managed a few websites with sometop names.
So how does he do it?
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Use Branding In Your Domain Name
Google uses brand signals to distinguish high quality websites from low quality websites.
In October 2008 Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, said: Brands are the solution, not the problembrands are how you sort out the cesspool .
So dont be afraid to use your brand name in your domain name.
Brand creates distinction and in the over-crowded world of cyber space, thats exactly what you need a way to stand out. A way to be memorable.
An exact match domain targets your keyword exactly
How To Choose The Best Domain Extension For Your Personal Site
By now, you know how important it is to have a personal resume website in your arsenal. We’ve also shared a few tips on making your resume website more interactive and provided the crucial mistakes you should avoid.
But, there is another important consideration to make before purchasing a domain name for your website, and that is the domain extension.
When youre creating a personal resume website, its important to go with your name. After all, this website is all about you and presenting yourself in the best possible light to potential employers. Choosing anything else for a domain name would be just plain silly.
Another point to keep in mind is that your site is the very beginning of your personal brand. Changing your domain later on, could hurt not only your brand but your search rankings as well. Thats why its crucial to settle on the right combination of your first and last name paired with the right extension now.
However, finding the best domain name extension might prove to be more difficult than you imagine. If you have a relatively common name, there is a good chance that someone already grabbed their personal domain with a .com extension. What should you do then? What if your name is already taken?
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Register Your Chosen Domain Name
Find a domain name registrar . Registrars are great resources to have in your back pocket, as many offer a one-stop-shop for domain registration, website hosting, and custom email addresses. If youre going to create a website for your new domain name immediately, go ahead and host your site in the same place where youve registered the domain. WordPress.com offers this option, allowing you to keep everything organized and in one place.
When it comes to picking your TLD , its worth considering that most of us intuitively type .com at the end of any website so this might be the easiest direction to go in. WordPress.com offers many different TLDs to choose from they can serve as an additional way to customize your business or blog.
Tip : Decide On Targetable Domain Types
Creating sub-domains doesnt always make sense. A sub-division of your web address can also be confusing to web visitors, for example, if you generally dont have a lot of content or if the sub-domain distracts too much from the actual domain name. Therefore, only decide to use an individual third-level domain if you have a clear concept in mind for this. A specific sub-domain is useful for the following scenarios, among others:
- Differentiation of different language versions
- Separation of content from other offers such as a service area, a blog, or a forum
- Marking a specific web service such as an app or an FTP server
- Operating an online store in parallel to the website under the same second-level domain
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How To Choose A Domain Name For Your Business In 5 Steps
REVIEWED BY:Kelly Main
Kelly is a former Google Tech Entrepreneur and Apple Developer who has counseled businesses of all sizes and growth stages. You can find her expertise across Fit Small Business in , business website, and business trend content.
Roberta is a staff writer for Fit Small Business. With more than 5 years of experience in the writing industry, she now focuses on creating content about business websites for the Sales and group.
This article is part of a larger series on Small Business Websites.
Choosing a domain name for your business is one of the first things you need to do when setting up your website. A good domain name promotes traffic to your site by being short, memorable, and on-brand. Well show you how to choose a domain name by helping you create a list of acceptable alternative domain names using keywords, explain the difference between domain extensions, and tell you how to research a potential domains history before purchase.
Heres how to choose a domain name with five key tips, straight from the pros:
But What About Search
Using a new domain ending won’t hurt your search presence or SEO. It’s worth noting that in the eyes of Google and other search engines, all TLDs are equal. A new TLD won’t affect your search engine ranking, or put it lower in the list of websites that appear based on a search.
Using a new domain ending won’t hurt your search presence.
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Consider Enabling Domain Id Protection
In simple terms, domain ID protection masks your personal contact information from anyone performing a whois lookup on your domain name.
Let me say this again, by default, all of this is visible to anyone who puts your domain name through a tool such as the aforementioned who.is.
This is not perfect. First, anyone can see this info, which means your personal details are exposed. Youre basically sacrificing part of your privacy for nothing in exchange.
So, the way to solve this is to set domain ID protection with your domain registrar . This is usually a paid feature, though. The price tag can be around $1 a month. Heres how to do this with Namecheap:
Once under domain ID protection, the whois details of your domain get replaced with your registrars information.
Create A List Of Alternative Domain Names
Unless you have an extremely unique business name, the chances of the domain name being available are slim. Before you begin your search, come up with a list of at least 10 other ideal domain names you can use. Again, words like The can make all the difference, as evidenced by domains like TheKnot.com.
Best practices:
- Avoid hyphens: Hyphens make your domain name harder to remember, and the harder it is to remember, the greater the chance that people will make mistakes while trying to find it.
- Avoid acronyms: Unless people know your business by an acronym , its best to stay clear of acronyms. Potential visitors are unlikely to find your domain name if you use a shortened version of your business name.
- Avoid double letters : Doubling up on letters increases the chances of your visitors typing in your name wrong. An example of this is All Learn, which uses the domain name All-Learn.org . In this case, using a hyphen actually makes their domain name easier to spell.
Pro tip: When thinking of names, consider how it looks in different languages. Sometimes, words in one language mean something completely different in another, and you want to avoid any chance of using an offensive wordespecially if youre trying to market internationally.
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Shop Around To Find The Best Price
Even though all domain registrars offer the same product they register a domain name on your behalf the pricing can sometimes be very different. For that reason, its always a good idea to shop around with different registrars and compare the prices of the domain name you want to get.
Just to give you an example, if youre after a .co domain extension a fairly popular choice these days youll find out that the same domain will cost you:
- $11.99 at GoDaddy
- $6.88 at Namecheap
- $32.50 at ENOM, and so on.
Now, Im not saying that Namecheap is always the cheapest, because its not. The price always depends on the specific TLD you want to get, so always go to multiple registrars and see whats up.
Also, just a general note: Always keep your login credentials to the registrars user panel very secure. If anyone gets access to that panel, theyll be able to transfer your domain to their account .
Which brings me to:
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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Avoid Using Hyphens Or Numbers In Your Domain
Okay, yes. 123-reg.co.uk breaks both those rules, but In general, numbers in a domain name can cause confusion , while hyphens are an extra thing for people to remember. Plus, if someone types your domain without a hyphen, they could get an error message or end up on a completely different website.
Which Tld Should I Choose
The decision about your domain name is very specific to you and your goals. You can see a list of all TLDs available with Google Domains onthis page. Here are some questions to consider when choosing your domain name:
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