Posted in Site Grind Resources - Articles
Choosing a domain name boils down to availability, preference and a dash of common sense. There is nothing more frustrating than choosing the perfect domain name only to find out it’s already taken. Carefully evaluate your remaining choices before making a snap decision.
As the internet has grown over the years, optimal, TLD’s have become limited. Business owners are finding themselves registering domain names that are abbreviated, irrelevant, excessively long, or hyphenated.
Although there is no “wrong” domain name choice, there are some that won’t work as well for your needs as others.
Ideally, your business name (or your service focus) and your domain name should match. But when your business name isn’t available as a domain name, what are your choices?
All domains are lowercase. Regardless of how you advertise your domain name, they are still registered with lowercase letters and can include numbers or hyphens.Abbreviations:
One suggestion when abbreviating a domain name is not to abbreviate the words, but add a state abbreviation. For instance, if your business is “Dime a Dozen Books” and dimeadozenbooks.com or .net is not available, you could try dimeadozenbooksOH.com (if you’re located in OH that is).
If that doesn’t work, you could try a partial abbreviation such as ddbooks.com/.net. Or even ddbooksOH.com/.net. You can also try adding your area code as an option such as 614dimeadozenbooks, 614ddbooks, etc.
If you have a long business name such as “Superior Telecom Industries of Greater Seattle” you could try stigs.com/.net, superiortelecomWA.com/.net, superiortelecomseattle.com/.net, etc.
Make sure the abbreviation makes sense to your customers.
If the letters are too random and do not coincide with your business name customers will have difficulty remembering and then finding your website.
Hyphenated:
Although a valid option when seeking a top level domain, we suggest avoiding hyphens if at all possible; they are difficult to type and unnatural to say when speaking, not to mention they may also drive traffic to the wrong site. To emphasize this point let’s look at the following scenario...
Your business is called “Best Auto Detailing” and a company down the street that specializes in auto detailing already registered that name. You then decide to register best-auto-detailing.com/.net. One of your customers decides to tell their friends about you and says “just visit best auto detailing dot com, they’re great!” You can draw your own conclusion here, that referral just went to the wrong company’s website.
Excessively Long:
There is actually nothing wrong with a long domain name, but it is a chore to type and creates the potential for spelling mistakes. Try a relevant abbreviation instead.
A domain name can be up to 67 characters which include the “dot” and extension at the end – that’s like typing the entire alphabet two and a half times!Irrelevant Names:
Ever visited a website only to find the site itself has absolutely nothing to do with what the name suggests? This tends to happen for various reasons, some innocent and some malicious.
Regardless of the reasoning, it confuses the visitor. When choosing your domain name and your business name (or a name of relevant phrasing) is not available, avoid picking a random name. You want your customers to connect you with your domain name, make it something that makes sense to them and will work for you.
Curious if your perfect domain name is available? Head over to our sister site, sitegrind.net and check today!
