Having a good domain name for your businesses website is the ground work for your websites and businesses online success. When it comes to picking a domain for your website here are the 5 characteristic that should be considered:
1. Keep it short & sweet.
Users like short and to the point domain names. There is no number of characters that you should try to have but staying under 10 characters, and never exceed 20 is a good guideline when picking your domain. As for the number of words in your domain, one word is gold, two words you’re still in good shape, three words is average, but four or more is pushing the envelope!
2. Use easy spelling.
Getting creative with your domain name by using imaginative wording and spelling can be fun but we recommend you keep the spelling correct and avoid unusual foreign words. The last thing you want to do is send people intended to come to your website to another page with funky hard to spell words.
3. Have a .com extension.
Unless you have a specific reason for your domain name not to end in .com due to a location you are targeting or you are a school using .edu you should most certainly use .com. This extension is the most popular and familiar extension used around the globe. Visitors tend to just assume your website address ends in .com anyways and so whether they find you using a search engine or type in your website address directly it is very likely that they will end it with .com.
4. Get descriptive.
Tell people what your site contains with a descriptive domain name before they even enter your site. If related keywords are present in the domain it might also help your search engine rankings. For example, if your website/business specializes in kitchen designs and remodeling, something like www.kitchendesigns.com will tell people what they should expect when they do click on the URL.
5. Get rid of hyphens and/or numbers.
Having hyphens and/or numbers goes along with not having the .com extension and foreign spelling. People assume there aren’t any and just want to find what they are looking for so don’t create a struggle before they even find your site!
Hyphens will be forgotten and once again send people to another place raising the chances of them ending their search all together. Numbers get confusing when it comes to spelling, is the number spelt out or do you use the actual number. This will hurt your chances of new visitors being able to find you by directly searching for you.
Following all these guidelines for a domain name will be difficult due to the amount of domain names already claimed and businesses buying multiple domain names to help with competition. These are just general factors that should be considered when picking that perfect domain! Good Luck!
By Giovanna DaPrato