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How to Choose a Domain Name for your Site

By Melissa |  Sep 15, 2021 (5 min read)

Marketing | SEO | Web Development

Your business website is your prime piece of real estate on the web. Unlike social media platforms, you completely own the content on your website, and you are not controlled by changes to the site by others.

A website should ideally be the first and last place your customers visit when they are considering buying from you. If you have an ecommerce business, it is the place to get the orders taken and close business.

For this reason, it must be easy for customers to find your site. The domain name you choose has to be easy to remember, easy to type, and easy to share.

In this article, we will look at how to choose a domain name for your business website.

What is a Domain Name?

The term domain name is the description of the words and characters that you type into the address bar to find a website. Domain names are also sometimes mistakenly called a URL (Uniform Resource Locator). However, different components make a domain name and a URL different.

For example, the URL https://brandastic.com/blog breaks down into different components.

https:// = protocol
brandastic.com = domain
/blog/ = path

Combined together, the https://brandastic.com/blog/ = URL

Domain names have been around in some form since 1986, and today they are part of our everyday lives. And the way they have evolved as part of the web has changed. Today there are many ways that you can get creative with your domain name.

Your Name On The Web

Ideally, most businesses should have a link between their business name and the domain name they choose. It makes logical sense both for those searching and also for search engines to source the information. Wherever possible, try to have elements of your brand name in the domain name.

The Shorter, The Better

If your company has a long name such as Best Quality Administration Services, it can be tempting to try to fit it all into a domain name. The problem is that bestqualityadministrationservics.com is very difficult to type with making a mistake.

It also makes no difference because most people will find you by clicking a result in a search engine. It doesn’t matter if you have an exact match domain to your business name, it just matters that your website is visible online in the SERPs.

For this reason, you may want to shorten the domain name to something to BQAS or adminservices.com so that people can type it.

Shorter domain names are usually easier to remember and hence tend to be premium domain names. Also, as a rule, avoid hypens in your new domain, as your potential customer may not remember to add in the hypen.

Choose The Right TLD

Those letters at the end of your name, which are usually .com, .net, .org are known as Top Level Domains. These domains are classified in a somewhat hierarchical order, with .com, .net. and .org being the first that were created almost 30 years ago.

Today there are a lot of variations available, including .business, .info, and even .fun. No rule says any domain is better than another; however, one important factor to consider is whether it is memorable. When you visit a domain registrar, you can see a huge variety of options. 

What Is The Best Site to Choose Your Domain?

If you are starting a new website, one of the big problems is to find out if your domain name is available. Of course, if you are looking for a .com web address, they are harder to source, as many have already been purchased.

Visit a site like Google Domains or Cloudflare to see what domain name options are available from a hosting provider. If you cannot find your business name as a .com, then you can also consider some alternative domains or even a domain hack.

There are many creative ways that you can create a clever domain name. If you visit Domain Hacks, you can try out an unconventional domain name that spells out the full name or title you are seeking. The site can often show you creative methods to have a shorter domain name than you might have imagined.

Think Long Term

Most important when choosing a domain is to remember you will have it for a long time. As your domain authority grows, it will improve your SERP results and make you more visible on the web.

Whichever domain name you choose, try to make it fit your business plans and any future products or services that you might want to incorporate into it.

Want to grow your online presence? Brandastic is an SEO, digital marketing, and advertising agency with offices in Orange County, Los Angeles, and Austin. We work with businesses to increase their Google rankings and grow their business revenue. Contact us today to get started.

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