How to choose a good domain name for a new venture in 6 steps

When starting a company or launching a new venture, it is important to reach the largest possible audience. Therefore, in the digital age, it is fundamental to have a website. This way our business will not be limited by territory and will have a chance to achieve success. However, in order for the website, which is a showcase of our brand and product, to properly attract customers, it is important to choose the right domain name. Here are 6 simple steps that will tell you how to choose the perfect name.

Domain name – table of contents:

1. Choosing a domain extension
2. The simpler, the better
3. Length matters
4. The name should define our business
5. What not to do when choosing a domain name?

Choosing a domain extension

When choosing a website address, it is worth analyzing every aspect. Not only the name is important, but also the extension. The vast majority of sites use the global extension .com, its advantage includes the shortcut on the keyboard in mobile browsers, which makes it intuitive for mobile users. If we choose a different extension for our site, it may happen that a viewer, looking for our company, intuitively by using the easily accessible .com, will see a competitor’s site.

However, when choosing an extension, it is also worthwhile to be guided by the profile of our company. Depending on the scope of our services, we can choose national or local extensions. The same is true if we want to emphasize the specifics of our business, in which case we can choose a so-called personalized extension that clearly defines the industry of our business, e.g. .travel, .sports, etc.

The simpler, the better

If we have already decided what type of extension will be suitable for our site, it is time to deal with the choice of a name. Taking into account the perception ability of the average person, it is best to opt for a simple name that will be easy to remember and intuitive for the recipient. Using complicated phrases in the domain name will make it more difficult for people to reach our offer. Remember to choose a name that is easy to pronounce and write down. A difficult name will generate many potential misspellings, making it difficult for our customers to find our site.

Length matters

The shorter the name, the better. According to available statistics, Internet users will easily find our site if its name consists of less than 12 characters. It is recommended that the name should not contain numbers and hyphens, as well as special characters such as @ or &.

Why 12 characters? According to experts, names exceeding this amount consist of about 3 syllables, which makes the word more difficult to pronounce, and therefore also to remember. Moreover, the fewer the number of characters, the faster we will type it into a search engine on a smartphone. However, the maximum allowable number of characters in a domain name is 63, but by far the best choice will be to use 12, as this will also positively affect the position of the site in search engines.

The name should define our business

A website is a modern business card. Therefore, it’s important that its name reflects the nature of our company or industry. An interesting way to distinguish the brand is to use a catchy slogan, the abbreviation of which, for example, consisting of its first letters, will serve as the name of our site. In this way we will stand out from the competition, which may offer the same products or services to the customer, but it is our slogan that will get stuck in their head.

Moreover, brand or product names are often used in domain names. Building a new brand is not easy and often consumes a lot of time, but including a unique name in the website address can help spread the product. It is important that our brand name is unique and does not contain existing trademarks. If our brand is well associated in the offline world, it is worth using the same brand in the domain name.

The domain name should be the same or very close to the site name. The recipient may feel confused after typing in the address and being redirected to a site with a completely different name than our domain.

What not to do when choosing a domain name?

When choosing a domain name, do not use hyphens and special characters. For the user, they are problematic to type. In addition, by using them in the name, our site, and consequently the company, may be perceived as unreliable. Let’s not choose as a domain name words that can be written in several ways. The intricacies in spelling will generate unnecessary errors during searches, thus reducing the number of interactions.

In addition, if we do not want to expose our site to the suspicion of search engine bots, let’s avoid errors in the domain name and the use of names of existing brands or trademarks. Otherwise, our domain may be suspended, and the fact of using proprietary data may be reported to the relevant authorities.

Check the availability of the domain

Even if we have found the perfect name for our domain, the most important thing is that it should not be occupied. Therefore, we need to check the availability of the address we are interested in. It may happen that the domain is available, but it has been used in the past. In this case, you should check its history, because there are two options: either the history will be good or bad.

If the previous owner took care of the domain, the content on the site was valuable and – moreover – overlapping with our business profile, we can benefit from it. This is because the domain may have had many anchors and backlinks, affecting SEO. If the links to the site still exist and the linking sites are valuable and related to our business, the traffic will be higher than if we buy a new domain.

Otherwise, if the domain was considered spammy in the past, it is better to look for another one, because due to the shady history, the position of our site will not be very good. Choosing an online domain name is one of the most important marketing decisions for our business these days. It is important to keep in mind the consistency of the brand both offline and online.

Read also:Is it time to expand your startup team?

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