How to choose your domain name

Your domain name is the foundation for your website business, so it requires some consideration. Domain names are what people remember when they search for your business on the internet, so we recommend that you choose something memorable and relevant to your business.

A domain name is broken into two parts: the Mid Level Domain Name, which is the part that goes before the ‘dot’ and the Top Level Domain Name, which is what goes after the Dot (e.g. com, Co.uk etc).

Tips for choosing your mid-level domain name:

There are two schools of thought here: branding and key word inclusion. Branding means that your domain name can be completely unrelated to your business. You are, in essence, creating a brand, so you can choose to use a word that is essentially meaningless to your business and then use marketing techniques to make the word into a brand that people will remember. Many large, successful companies do this; Yahoo, Monster and Amazon are good examples.

These companies have a lot of money to use in their marketing campaigns, getting their domain name known and recognised, and they do not need to rely on relevance to their products or business to ensure that people find their websites when they are searching for them. If you have a lot of money to spend on a marketing campaign, you could also choose to follow this route- just remember to advertise your domain name as much as possible, to ensure that people know the name before they get onto the internet to search for what they’re looking for.

For smaller businesses, like the ones we usually work with, it makes sense to get some key words into your domain name. If people aren’t likely to know the name of your company before they search on the internet, there isn’t much use is solely naming your domain after your business.

Let’s take the example of a B&B for the purpose of illustrating this point. Say the B&B is called Rose Cottage and is based in Truro. People searching for accommodation in Truro are unlikely to already know about Rose Cottage, unless they have visited before, therefore they will likely search for ‘accommodation in Truro’, or something similar- not ‘rose cottage B&B’. If you want the search engines to start working for you before you even put any content into your site, it would be worth adding the place name Truro to the domain name, e.g. Rosecottagetruro. You could also add accommodation to the name, e.g. accomodationrosecottagetruro. However this is excessively long, and a tip for domain names is to keep them as brief as possible yet still get key words into the name to help you.

The internet search engines are complicated and ever-changing, and some people will argue that there is no concrete benefit in including a key word into your domain name. However our experience has shown that it does benefit the search engine rankings, and if you can do something as small as this to help you get your business in front of others on the internet, it seems like a positive step to take.

Some more things to remember:

• Your mid-level domain name can be as long as 67 characters, but don’t get carried away! Remember that people should be able to remember your domain name, so 67 characters is definitely too long. This said, ensure that you use full words and not acronyms- although they save on characters they are harder to remember. Rosecottagetruro would be a fine length: it is memorable and says everything that needs to be said by including the business name and location.

• Try to avoid hyphens. Your preferred domain name will not always be available. During the dot.com boom of the late 1990’s people went crazy buying names that weren’t even relevant to their company, in the hope that the companies that did need them would pay well over the odds to buy them back. If your preferred name is not there, you might be panicked into adapting the name with hyphens between the words as this version is probably available. We wouldn’t recommend that you do this.

The reason for this is the ‘human error’ factor. It is easy to forget the hyphens when typing a domain name into a web browser, if the hyphens are missed out your potential customer will not end up at your site. Some people think that the hyphens help search engines to differentiate between words in your domain name, and therefore give you better search engine rankings, this could be the case but the benefits are probably not great enough versus including the words without hyphens. Before you decide to use hyphens think of alternative names that might not be taken- you can always ask Yedit for some suggestions, we’re always happy to help out.

Tips for choosing your top-level domain name

There are various options for top level domain names. The most popular being country specific: .com, .co.uk, .fr, .de etc. Following this there are other options like .net, .org, .biz and many more. We always recommend that you choose a country-specific domain.

Firstly, when a search engine looks for websites it searches for the country specific domain sites first, before .net and .biz etc. Therefore, you have more chance of appearing in the user’s search engine results if you have a country-specific domain.

Secondly, you must think of your customers. They are more used to typing .com or .co.uk as the top level domain, and therefore might not find your website if they are looking for it and it has a .biz or .org domain name.

Thirdly, it makes more sense to cater to your community and customers. If you are aiming your site at people in the UK and that’s where your business is based then choose .co.uk. If you are catering worldwide, then choose .com. If you’re based in France it should be .fr etc. For most businesses that we work with, we recommend that they choose .co.uk.
As .com and .co.uk are the most popular top level domain names this reduces your choice when selecting your complete domain name. If you try to buy the domain name rosecottagetruro.co.uk and it is taken, the domain name generator will probably give you the option of rosecottagetruro.net or .org or .biz- we would not recommend that you take these options. Instead go back to the drawing board: speak to us and we’ll come up with another name, appropriate to your business that will fit in with the guidelines above.

FINALLY

Finally, and most importantly, remember that the key to the success of your website is getting your domain name out there! Once you have registered it make sure that your domain name is as visible as possible in everything that your business does. Yedit will set up your email accounts so that they reflect your new domain name e.g. somebody@rosecottagetruro.com, this means that your domain name will be visible in all of your email correspondence. On top of this, make every effort to promote your domain name in your business.

If you own a B&B then get the domain name added to your next run of brochures or leaflets; sign up your domain name with the local tourist office so that they can promote it too; add it to your business cards, bills, headed paper etc. Promotion is the key! Yedit Xpress is a very clever content management system that will optimise your website to achieve positive search engine rankings, but this is an organic process that can take time to come to fruition. It always helps to promote your domain name as much as possible within your arena, giving it the best chance to succeed in the wide world of the internet.

If you have any further questions about registering or choosing your domain name, please contact Yedit.