What is a website’s domain name, and why is it needed? Domain names or address is a unique text used to access a website from other software. Instead of a complex IP address, users can type easily memorable words into their browser windows to open a specific page.
Investing in a custom website address for your page and a tailored e-mail will give you a more professional look. It will also protect trademarks and copyright and improve brand awareness, credibility, and search engine position. Addresses ending with a .com or .net domain are trustworthy examples, as they are the most popular, oldest, and most secured TLDs globally.
How to Come Up with a Good Domain Name
The first step in creating excellent domain names is to answer two simple questions:
- Do you have the money and time to spend on a custom address?
- How do you want to get traffic to your website?
Having enough funds is vital because these names should be registered, and they aren’t cheap or easy to obtain. Meanwhile, a discoverable and brandable domain name is critical to getting good web traffic.
Having a discoverable address means a user will be able to access a page by searching keywords or phrases of a topic.
A brandable name does not say what the website is about but will establish the business’s brand name and credibility, aiding users to quickly find a website in their search engine. Brandable sites like Google.com, Apple.com, Speedtest.net, and slideshare.net are good examples of domain names, visited by millions of people every day.
Top Strategies in Making Effective Domain Names
Other than choosing how you want people to find your website, there are more factors you should consider. Besides keywords and brand names, high-quality content and excellent user experience are needed to rank high on Google.
Here are the top five strategies for choosing a good name:
1. Choose Between the Two TLDs
In the beginning, there were only two top-level domains (TLDs): “.com” and “.net,” but today, there are various other extensions available.
Some attention-grabbing extensions are “.org.”, “.blog” and “.pizza,” but the original TLDs are still better in website traffic, accessibility and credibility. These TLDs are well-known among all age groups and easy to remember.
2. Keep It Short, Easy to Pronounce, and Spell
Keywords are essential, but addresses with over 15 characters are hard to remember. Keep it short and be wary of words that are hard to spell to avoid typos.
WOM or word-of-mouth marketing is very effective, and choosing pronounceable and catchy addresses that are easy to spell will significantly help promote your brand.
3. Make It Unique
Perform a trademark search to check the uniqueness of your chosen web address before registering. Having a similar or identical name to other businesses can cause confusion and fill the brand’s search results with irrelevant links.
Also, domains are registered and cannot be used by a different brand; once it violates any trademarks, the owner will be sued and required to give up the name.
4. Think About Expansion in the Future
Pick a name with words related to your business niche. Simply visiting Etsy will give you an idea of how you can use such terms effectively. However, it can also limit the content on the page.
For example, a pastry chef chooses a web address like chocoblog.net but then wants to expand and blog about other pastries and desserts that don’t contain chocolate. It will be difficult for him or her to attract new readers and keep readers who are only interested in chocolate. That is why choosing a flexible name is very important.
5. Avoid Special Characters and Double Letters
Your web address should be easy to write, without special characters, like hyphens. Other than decreasing the traffic due to typos, it may become a spam webpage.
If the page address you want is not available, add a prefix or suffix instead of unique characters or double letters.
Conclusion
As selecting the best web address can be challenging, these top five strategies should be used to ensure the success of a business website. Catchy domain names are useless if they won’t create traffic, so remember to use .com or .net in the name and keep it short and unique. If it’s still difficult, you can find domain name generators online and other sites that offer this type of service.
