Back in the day, establishing a domain name for your business was as easy as simply adding “dot com” to your business name. Nowadays, most business names are decided only after an extensive online search to find an attractive and available domain. Selecting your domain name — or website address — takes time, consideration and a fair amount of dogged research.
So if you’re starting a new venture, business or brand, and you need a new domain name, what factors should you consider?
Keywords
These are the descriptive words that classify or categorize your business. Placing keywords within your web address makes your domain name intuitive and your profession self-evident. Consider this business:
www.crossmanassociates.com
Often the first instinct new business owners have is to create a domain using their name, such as the one above. But unless you’re a well-known author, speaker or brand, utilizing just your name means leaving money on the table. By omitting keywords, you’re not leveraging all the opportunities afforded by search engine optimization.
Include the industry, sector or niche
While the URL above could be any variety of business — from nutrition consultants to accountants to therapists — the modified version below clearly conveys the industry.
www.crossmanassociatespodiatry.com
Location, location, location
In addition to the industry or business niche, for locally-focused businesses, including geography as part of the domain helps achieve placement in search results and also is helpful for users targeting geographically-relevant businesses.
For example: The first URL below includes the seacoast town where the inn is located, whereas the second one is not capitalizing on the benefit of including geography.
www.innatportsmouth.com
www.theshawmutinn.net
Memorable and meaningful
A meaningful web address makes it easy for others to help you market your business with word of mouth advertising. If your business name explains what your business is about, it’s memorable. Our company name, Online Amplify, shares our key deliverable for our clients — increasing their visibility on the web. Consider these other examples; each provides the reader a reasonably good idea what the business is about:
www.WentworthMarina.com
Simple!
Who needs more complexity in their world? Beware of URLs that are confusing, hard to remember or tricky to spell. There are times when removing the spaces between words (necessary to convert a business name into a URL) make a perfect good domain name tricky to read.
Example: There’s a financial expert named Ric Edelman who uses radio ads to promote his services. He has a number of websites with keyword-rich URLs. As he is well-known in the financial world, he also has one domain that is simply his name: www.ricedelman.com. He fully embraces the fact that while his URL spells his name, it may read differently at first. In his radio ads, he says, “Go to Ric Edelman dot com — that’s Rice Delman dot com.”
Numbers, hyphens and other complexities
Numbers as part of domain names cause frustration, as the user must consider whether to use the numeral or spell out the number. Is your golf website URL www.fiveiron.com or www.5iron.com?
Hyphens are inadvisable for the same reason. Chances are, the reason your URL has a hyphen in it is that the domain without the hyphen was already in use. So when a client prospect is searching for your business online, are they more likely to stumble upon your competitor’s website higher in the search results?
Any complexities regarding your domain name, such as a complicated or hard to spell web address, use of a hyphen or ampersand can hurt your business’ ability to be found online. Make your domain easy to read and remember.
Short (but sweet) domain names
Short is good. The goal for your domain name (as for your website content) is to get your point across efficiently. When it comes to website URLs, that means as few characters as possible. While a domain name can be as long as 253 characters (before the extension), resist the urge. A good target length is 15 characters.
No initials
In your quest for a shorter URL, don’t forget that your domain name needs to be memorable and understandable. Put yourself in a prospective customer’s shoes when considering a potential domain name and (even though it’s shorter), resist the urge to abbreviate your company name in your domain. While referring to your business by its initials might be second-nature to you, chances are prospects and customers don’t think of your business in those terms.
Last words about domain names
Once you’ve decided on your domain, purchase logical alternatives (including similar names and other extensions such as .com, .biz, .info) and have your developer redirect them to your website domain.
Peruse our blog for more website optimization and search engine optimization tips, or sign up to receive our posts by email. Or if you’re ready to launch your business,
This post was published previously on OnlineAmplify.com and
has been updated for timeliness and relevance.
