A well-functioning business website is a critical tool that can help with a company’s profits and financial health. Taking a couple of examples: It works as a marketing tool and sells the business to clients and it also acts like a salesperson by performing as a payment gateway to accept and transfer sales and payments. So what makes a website well-functioning? Well, there are many factors that contribute to it, but by far the most basic and key one is choosing the right domain name for it.
Almost all of the most popular websites we use today have domain names which either contain the business’ name or describe the service they provide. Could you imagine Facebook with a domain name like “socialmediasite.info”? How about Google with “thesearchengine.info”? Facebook.com and Google.com define the two companies. There is an automatic relationship between the businesses and their domain name – have you ever heard anyone ask where they would have to go to find the Facebook or Google websites?
A simple mistake while choosing a name could result in a serious blunder. However humorous as it may seem, a therapist’s office owning a website named “therapist.com” or the IT scrap company that decided to go with “itscrap.com” is a great advantage.
Apart from sending distorted messages, domain names must be search engine friendly. Google, for one, ranks pages from domain names with relevant keywords higher than those with random or irrelevant ones. Care must therefore be taken to choose a domain name that not only has meaning but incorporates at least two relevant keywords. (It is really difficult to find single-word domains these days as they are mostly taken.)
And so, let us take a look at how we must proceed when choosing the right domain name:
First Choice should be a “.com” Domain Name: domain names with .com extensions should always be sought first. The reason is that when people search for or type a domain name they are most likely to look for them “.com” rather than say “.org” or “.info”.
As a matter of fact, using the shortcut “CTRL + ENTER” after typing in a domain name adds a “.com” by default. This is a clear sign that even browser makers realize it is the most common extension name people will look for.
But that doesn’t mean the other domain name extensions should be forgotten about, either. Whenever possible businesses should make sure they buy all the other ones and point or redirect them to the main (.com) site. This serves to garner and redirect as much traffic as possible as well as keeping competitors or squatters from getting their hands on them.
Keep it Short: although this point might clash with the one made about using keywords in the domain name, if it comes between choosing a long domain name (more than two words) try to think of using an abbreviation. There is a good reason behind Cable News Network using the abbreviated CNN for its domain name – it’s short, easy to remember and easy to type into a browser.
Go for Brand Names: keeping to the CNN domain (cnn.com), it needs to be said that when it comes to choosing between keywords and brands, it is brand that always comes on top. Therefore, businesses with established brand names in the real world will easily have their domain names rank higher because they are already known to John Q. Public who will automatically type in the brand name when searching for the site.
If a business doesn’t have a brand name, it could opt for a word that doesn’t exist (make one up) and then implement an intense marketing campaign around it. Remember, no one had ever heard of the word “Google” a few years back – today, everyone knows it.
No Hyphens, No Numbers: hyphens make it difficult for people to remember and tedious for them to type. The same applies for numbers – not only do they look unprofessional, they could also confuse people searching for a site (“was it 222 or 202?”).
Moreover, mistyped URLs can lead visitors to competitor or even sites which are created specifically for the sake of getting traffic that arises from such mistakes.
Get Your Hands on New Domain Extensions: in case you haven’t heard, domain name extensions have moved on from the old three-lettered format (.com, .net, .org etc.) to more-specific and better-descriptive words.
Most large (and many small) domain sale and auction sites have started selling domain extensions like .club, .guru and .music. Business should jump in right now and started buying all the relevant ones before they too are taken by the mad rush that is soon to follow.
Travel companies can buy .world domain extensions; businesses can either simply buy .company domains or, depending on their choice of trade, opt for .cafe or .club for example. To add emphasis to a domain name, extensions like .rocks can be chosen while .guru can be added to the domain name of websites belonging to experts or specialists.
And so, there you have it. These five tips should help businesses decide what names they should use for their websites.
