Learn how to choose a good domain name for your online business to help it stand out and distinguish itself from the rest of the online crowd. One of the things that usually stays permanent with your online business is your domain name… so choose it carefully!
Tips For Choosing A Good Domain Name
- Brainstorm and get creative. Jot down a list of potential domain name candidates and sleep on it. Start to cross them off the list until you come down to the last one.
- Try to make it easy to remember so that others will have an easier time of remembering it as well.
- If it’s too difficult to pronounce than it may also be too difficult for others to remember it.
- Keep your domain name relatively short like no more than 15 to 18 characters in length. A longer one than that may start to pose problems for others to remember it.
- Include a targeted keyword that best describes what your website is all about.
- Get the “.com” extension after your domain name – the most popular type. Although there are many other types of extensions that you can get such as .net, .org, or .biz, getting the .com extension is still the preferred way to go for your online business since it’s the most recognizable and longstanding out of all the other extensions.
- Try to avoid using numbers (or hyphens) in your domain name. This can make your domain name harder to remember or even be mistakenly typed in wrong in search engines.
For example, if you have the number “2” in your domain name, someone might get confused and type in: “two,” “to,” or even “too” instead of “2.” For reasons like this, it’s best to get a domain name without numbers (or hyphens).
Tip: if you need to have the number “2” in your domain name, then you can always get extra domain names that have the alternative ways of expressing it: “two,” “to,” or even “too” and redirect all of those domain names to the correct domain name with the “2.”
If you absolutely need a number in your domain name for the brand recognition than get it. Domain names with numbers in them for the brand recognition include such well known ones as 7-eleven.com, wd40.com, and 3m.com.
- If the domain name that you want is already taken and are looking for some new ideas for it, then use a domain name generator to help you possibly come up with new alternative ones. Check out the domain name generator from GoDaddy.
- Run it by family and friends to see what they think about it.
- If you have a storefront business, it would be best if the name of that business and the domain name of your website were both under the same names. This will help to prevent any possible confusion for someone trying to remember two different names for the same business, especially for those trying to remember what to type in the search engines to find your website on the Internet.
Tip: see if your domain name is also available to be used for opening up your social media accounts, if you are going to do social media. If so, grab it while you can!
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Exact Match vs Brand Domain Names
When thinking about choosing your domain name, you can also consider these two popular approaches:
Exact Match Domain Names
This can possibly give you a quicker boost in SEO rankings (organic search) due to targeting and perceived relevancy that is associated with your online business of what people are exactly searching for. For example, websites with exact match domains (EMD’s) would be like the following ones:
- cars.com
- hotels.com
- insurance.com
- shoes.com
These websites all have a page 1 listing on Google bringing them tons of free organic traffic. Of course, they also have other factors of getting on page 1 of Google like having domain authority and quality backlinks as well.
However, be careful with using an EMD for your website. Google cracked down on EMD websites back in 2012 by penalizing the ones who were trying to “game” the system to rank higher on the SERP’s (search engine result pages) with using EMD’s, but were really just low quality websites offering no real value to the end user.
So, if you are going to get an EMD, make sure that your website offers a lot of valuable content and information to satisfy and benefit the end user. This will help to keep the search engines happy and to help promote your online business possibly higher on the SERP’s.
Brand Domain Names
This can give you long-term brand recognition for your online business due to the uniqueness of your brand domain name. For example, most everyone knows about these websites:
- amazon.com
- apple.com
- facebook.com
- google.com
All these companies have set the precedence for their own brand recognition in the Internet world by using unique brand domain names.
Be Careful With Domain Name Infringement
When choosing your domain name, make sure that it’s not infringing upon that of another company. This could result in big legal trouble as well as having your domain name shut down under infringement laws.
Domain Name Registrar
The largest domain name registrar in the world is GoDaddy. They make registering your domain names simple, fast and affordable. See why so many business owners who have an online presence choose GoDaddy to be their domain name registrar of choice!
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Start your domain name search today by searching for one directly on the GoDaddy website and be on your way in starting your own online business.
Cost Of Getting A Domain Name
The cost of getting a domain name for your online business is pretty inexpensive that will cost you approximately $10 (or less) for the first year, and not that much more thereafter upon renewal.
Note: Your personal information (such as your name & address) will become public on the Internet with getting a domain name. However, if you want to keep all of your personal information confidential from the public, you can easily do so for just a small charge of approximately $10/yr (or less). This is usually just an add-on option when getting your domain name.
When you get a domain name, you are really just “renting” it for just a period of time which you can renew on a yearly (or longer) basis. If you forget to renew your domain name, you run the risk of someone else grabbing it from you. However, there are safeguards that you can put in place to prevent this from happening like having your domain name set to automatic renewal with your domain name registrar.
How To “Point” Your Domain Name
If you are getting your domain name from one domain name registrar (such as GoDaddy) and hosting it at another company (such as HostGator), you will need to “point” your domain name of where it’s being held at (GoDaddy) to the Internet web servers of your hosting company (HostGator).
This is really easy to do in just 2 simple steps:
Step 1
Just copy the id numbers of the name servers from your hosting company and paste them into the designated name server input boxes where your domain name resides. The designated name server input boxes can usually be found in the domain manager section of your domain name registrar.
Step 2
Go to your hosting company and add your domain name. Just go to your cPanel within your hosting account and locate the domain name section where you can then add your domain name.
Finally
Once you choose a good domain name for your online business, you will now be ready to install WordPress for free that should be offered by your web hosting company. Now you can start building your website for the whole world to see!