Can’t choose the best domain name? Doing so is an essential step when creating a new website. It should be easy to remember, catchy, and describe your vision at least briefly. Picking the right one is a hard and lengthy process that requires a lot of consideration. In fact, it is similar to choosing a name for your company.
Beware that there are numerous cases when people picked a hard-to-remember domain name and lost a significant amount of traffic due to typing mistakes. Such a site label automatically creates an image that definitely does not look professional; therefore it doesn’t encourage users to trust it and treat it as a reputable source of information/services.
Therefore, if you are currently in the process of launching your online business and are looking for tips on choosing the best domain name for SEO, you came to the right place. Here, we will share our tips on how to brainstorm ideas, what tools to use, and how to finally choose the best domain name.
Important! If you think that you can start with a specific domain name at first and then change it later? it is not how it works! You can’t change the domain name in the future. Likewise, it is vital to make the right decisions when registering your website’s domain name.
12 Tips to Choose the Best Domain Name For Your Website
1. Domain Name Should Match Your Brand Name
It is evident that the best domain name version should represent your brand. Likewise, it is considered bad branding if the domain name does not match your company name.
Using an identical name for the company and domain is an ideal case. It helps people to find your website if they hear about it in real life. A perfect scenario sounds like this: before you launch your company, check if the exact domain name match is available to register and how much it costs.
If you can’t find an exact match, but you don’t want to change the company name, try to find a domain name that is as similar as possible.
Imagine how simple it is to type the brand name into the address bar and immediately access the site. Right? Additionally, consistency plays an important role when building a strong and memorable brand that is easily recognizable.
2. Choose A Brandable Name
A brandable domain name should be:
- Unique. It shouldn’t be confused with any other company.
- Short. Keep the name short (think about less than 15 characters).
- Meaningful. The name should describe your brand vision or at least give a brief idea of what your business is about. If that’s not the case, think about easily memorizable and catchy name ideas.
- Easy to remember. You want your brand name to be easy to remember so that people would remember it when they think about the information, products, or services you provide.
Usually, a brandable domain name allows people to quickly recognize it among numerous other websites and companies. Likewise, it is essential that the domain name would be unique and easy to remember. For this reason, you should pick a short and clear combination of words.
Following that, a strong brand should serve the specific needs of its target audience. In this case, the domain name must be meaningful, catchy, and inspiring to help attract new traffic and interest people.
To choose the best domain name, you may ask the following questions to help determine the perfect variant:
- How does the sound flow when you spell it out loud? Is it pleasant to the ear and easy-to-pronounce?
- How does it look like when written down? Does it please the eye and is there a play between words and letters?
- Is it relatable?
- Are there any hidden meanings or play with words that you are aiming to imply?
- What do people first think of when they hear the name?
3. Consider What Appears On Google Search When You Enter Your Brand Name
Googling your brand name and checking what appears on the search results is simply a must. You must know what kind of content comes up when people search for such a name. You might be surprised by the results.
Besides, if your domain name consists of words that are closely related to very competitive and strong brands, there is a strong risk that you might fail to be ranked high in Google search.
Remember, it is essential to appear in the first SERPs to gain traffic and grow your brand. Thus, it is better to choose a unique and distinctive domain name that can be easily ranked for.
4. Prioritize Uniqueness Over Keywordness
In simple terms, keywords are essential in SEO. However, a good domain name should not be overloaded with boring keywords which are not inspiring and catchy.
Just think whether you would be more interested in a unique brand name or a very straightforward one? For example, consider a website that is designed to help people find tourist attractions in London. Which domain would you pick ? LondonTouristMap.com or LondonBuddy.com?
Note that both domain names include the necessary London keyword, yet one is exciting and unique while the other is rather plain. Likewise, be sure that you get your priorities straight when choosing the best domain name! Do not underrate uniqueness over SEO.
5. Hyphens In Your Domain Name Is Not A Good Idea
Firstly, take into consideration that only a few famous companies use hyphens in their website names. Since these are strong brands that are well recognized you might consider this as a minor rule for the success of the website and the brand itself.
Additionally, think about what happens when you have to spell your domain name in real life. Would you be comfortable saying London, a hyphen, tourist, a hyphen, map, dot, com??
In my personal opinion, it is not only inconvenient but also deteriorates the quality and reliability of the brand. In numerous cases, it might even look shady and spammy for many computer users as they are used to clear and simple domain names, such as google.com, wikipedia.com, etc.
6. Find The Sweet Spot Between Optimization And Spammy Keywords
Even though it was previously mentioned that you should not go with keyword-heavy domain names, it does not mean that you are forbidden to include one.
Let’s consider the previous example with the website for tourists in London. Remember that you can combine both, the most necessary keyword and uniqueness in one domain name.
LondonBuddy.com contains the keyword which can help distinct people based in or visiting London. However, it is not overloaded with basic and boring words which supposedly optimize it.
Additionally, do not stress out if you cannot come up with the best domain name which would include both of these features. As I have mentioned before, choose a creative and catchy name over SEO instead.
7. Make Sure The Domain Name Is Short
I do believe that you as a person like to keep things simple. Likewise, other people also prefer short, clear, and memorable domain names over complicated ones.
It does not only help you to avoid typing mistakes when people are searching for your website but contributes to the design of well-branded business cards and email addresses as well.
Likewise, pick a short root domain, which is the main part of the LondonBuddy.com name. This will also help you manage your subpage architecture and URL structure to avoid long URLs.
8. Pick The Right Top Level Domain (TLD) For Your Audience
It is important to pick the right top-level domain (TLD) for the target audience. In simple terms, you must consider where the majority of your customers/readers are located.
For example, if you target people living all across the world, you should choose LondonBuddy.com over LondonBuddy.co.uk. Why? Because the country’s TLD slightly limits the reach of people living outside the specific country.
Furthermore, keep in mind that Google does not prioritize keywords in your TLD. Consider if you are a car dealer, ?.car? in your, TLD does not generate any benefit in terms of rankings. Not to mention that a global or a country TLD looks far more trustworthy to Internet users.
Likewise, in most cases, you should pick .com TLD for the global audience. Otherwise, define where your customers are located and choose the right country TLD for the best reach of your website.
9. Once Again, Check If It Is Unique
As we have mentioned before, a unique domain name is essential. You wouldn’t want to find out that other companies are using your domain with a different TLD and stealing a part of your website traffic, right?
You should not only pick a domain name that is completely unique but could also consider buying other TLDs for your domain. This way you would avoid the possibility of someone else using your domain name and could redirect users to the main domain.
10. Check username availability on social networks
Even though at first you might not consider creating a social media platform, it should definitely be on your future plans. Thus, check if all other social accounts are available for your brand name.
You can easily do that by using a special tool. Additionally, get hold of all profiles on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This is required that other people would not use your brand name. This is applicable if you do not use them at first as well.
11. Take A Look At Trademarks
It is equally important to check the trademarks of your brand name. You should not purchase the domain name if it is trademarked.
Also, consider trademarking the domain name once you purchase it. This can help you avoid potential copyright problems in the future.
12. Come Up with A Big List Of Domain Names
We always recommend writing down every possible option before you choose the right domain name for your business. There is no need to rush to buy the name on the registrar. Once you have a list of names, we suggest looking at it every day.
Yet, it is a great idea which could help you to choose the best domain name variant.