How To Choose a Website Name
— choose wisely, or it will cost you later
Choosing the right domain is crucial for your business. Changing it later will cost you not only money but will also cost you all of the work you put into it as far as branding and search rankings.
What is the brand
You have to decide if you want to be the brand, if the company is the brand or if your niche is the brand.
You are the brand
If you want to be the brand, something like the frontman in a band, the decision is easy. Use your name if you can. This, of course, depends on your name. If it is a common name, it may already be taken. If it is unusual and hard to spell, your customers may not find you.
If you have a name like Arnold Schwarzenegger without name recognition, it could be difficult. Heck, even Arnold uses only his last name for his website.
The company is the brand
If you already have a company, you may want to go with the company name if it is available or a combination of your company name and your brand or niche combined. If you do not have a company name yet, you have more flexibility.
Your niche is the brand
You could go with the third option, using just your brand or niche.
Try to stick with a .com Top Level Domain
Regardless of the domain you pick, the top-level part should be dot com. In your search, you may come up with what you think is the perfect domain, only to find the dot com version is already taken. You may be tempted to go with a different Top-Level Domain.
Don’t.
With over 1,500 top-level domains available, dot com is still the most trusted domain out there. There is another disadvantage of not using a dot com domain. You might decide on something like
johns.deals
which might sound good for someone offering online deals on products.
If that somebody, especially somebody that is not tech-savvy, hears your website name, they will likely type johns.deals.com or johnsdeals.com and you have sent your customer in the worst case, to your competition.
Use keywords if you can
If you can, use keywords in your domain name. Look for keywords that appear in searches for your market. Use Google’s Keyword Planner to find out what keywords in your business have high search volumes.
If you want access to Google’s Keyword Planner, you will need a Google Ad Words account. Do not worry. You can sign up for a Google Ad Words account for free, never run paid ads, and still use the Keyword Planner Tool. If you can get a high volume keyword in your domain name it is a plus.
Do not use the entire alphabet for your website name
Keep your domain name short. Most experts will say no longer than 15 characters. That is up to you.
The longer the domain name, the harder it is to remember and the more likelihood of a typo. As an example, murphyslifecoaching.com. Three words, not hard to spell, fairly easy to remember. It has 19 characters. I will let you decide. It is your domain name, and you are paying to register it. By the way, if you like murphyslifecoaching.com, the last time I checked, it is still available. Just make sure Murphy is your first or last name. Otherwise, it does not really make a whole lot of sense.
Word of mouth is good
Make it easy to pronounce and spell. I covered this at the beginning but I want to go over it in more detail. If somebody asks you for your website name and it is hard to pronounce, how are they going to type it in their browser?
Morgan Freeman gives a good talk on why the movie Shawshank Redemption got such lousy word-of-mouth marketing. How hard is it to remember Shawshank when you hear it for the first time?
Make it brandable
Your domain name should be stand out from the competition. You especially do not want to step on somebody else’s brand. That could lead to legal troubles. Brandable names are unique and easy to remember. Are you more likely to remember BuyBooksOnline.com or Amazon.com?
Avoid hyphens, maybe
This next one is a rule I do not agree with, but many other experts do recommend this. Avoid hyphens. Some people relate hyphenated domains with spam domains. Others claim it can hurt your SEO rankings. I say, if it brings clarity, use a hyphen.
Take a look at these domain names.
penisland.com
Is that Penis Land dot com
or is it
pen-island.com?
Or this example -
therapistfinder.com
is it The rapist finder dot com
or is it therapist-finder.com?
Just as a side note, go visit penisland.net. Do not worry. They specialize in all kinds of pens. You can see they opted to go without a hyphen. Was it a smart decision? Your call.
Established companies use hyphens
Just to put the cherry on top, here are a few companies that decided to go with hyphens.
Not exactly a bunch of unknowns.
Stacking letters
Try to avoid double letters. That is, the last letter of a word is the same as the beginning letter of the following word. I recommend you try this, but if you look at my domain name, I did not follow my own advice.
pivottowardsfreedom.com
If you want to go against the guidelines, at least know that you are doing it on purpose and not by accident.
Think about the future
Think about expansion. Let’s say you started a website, TheSilverShop.com. because you specialize in selling silver jewelry. What happens three years later when you start selling gold jewelry? Do you get a new domain that better reflects your market? If you do, you may lose all of the work you put into SEO and brand reputation. Niching down too much can cause you heartache later on.
Protect yourself against a lawsuit
Remember what I said about not stepping on other people’s trademarks or brands. Once you think you have your domain name go to the United States Patent and Trademark Office online and do a trademark search at
Use a domain name generator
There are about 360 million registered domains. You might think that all of the good domains are already taken. If you are still having trouble with your domain name, you can always visit a domain name generator. Just google domain name generator and pick the one you like.
You enter a few keywords, and the application makes some recommendations and searches informing you what is available and what is not available.
Wrapping it up
Thinking of a great domain name takes some work. Spend some time and research to make sure you have a domain name that can last the lifetime of your business. Just do not take forever. Spending anywhere from a couple of hours to a few days to find a good domain name is better than spending years finding a great domain name.
Perfection is the enemy of progress. If you never start, you will never succeed.
Originally published at https://pivottowardsfreedom.com on April 12, 2021.