Does your company have a name? Even if so, it doesn’t strictly follow that the choice of domain name for that company’s website will be a foregone conclusion.
Selecting the ‘right’ domain name can be tricky — and is ultimately a separate responsibility to that of deciding on the business name. So, what steps could you take to better your chances of the domain name doing its bit to help your website clock up an impressive tally of visitors?
Familiarise yourself with what a domain name is
Yes, what exactly is a domain name, anyway? TechRadar describes it as “the digital address of your site, the way people locate and visit it in the vast online world.”
While a postal address can include a street name and a postcode, a domain name consists of the ‘main’ name — so, in our own website’s case, ‘webaheadinternetltd’ — followed by what is called the ‘extension’ (that’s the ‘.co.uk’ bit in our URL).
Go for a suitable extension
Of course, ‘.com’ extensions are highly recognisable and memorable — so much so that you could easily feel inclined to take up one for your own site’s domain name. One potential problem, though, is that many people might associate them more with American than British businesses.
For this reason, if your company is based in the UK (and especially if you are only targeting a UK-specific market), it could work out better for you to settle for a ‘.co.uk’ extension. Alternatively, why not opt for ‘.org’ if the website is that of a charitable organisation?
Avoid including hyphens and numbers
The issue with including any of these in a URL is that doing so could make it too difficult to fully remember in a pinch.
Someone attempting to type the address could fail to remember that it contains, say, ‘5’ rather than ‘five’. Meanwhile, hyphens can be an awful hassle to type on a smartphone, where the onscreen keyboard may not have this little piece of punctuation as readily available as the letters.
See if you can insert a keyword
You might not be able to get away with including more than one if you want to keep the domain name relatively short and catchy. It’s often best to see a keyword’s inclusion as just a nice, optional extra rather than the main thing.
There’s a good reason why, even though you might always remember the business name ‘Costa Coffee’, the URL of the UK coffee shop chain itself is actually just ‘www.costa.co.uk’. The ‘Costa’ part is iconic, whereas focusing too much on keywords can leave a domain name looking derivative.
Consider including the company’s geographic area
Though you should probably resist heeding this suggestion if your company is primarily aiming for a global reach, a business targeting a local market could benefit from subtly mentioning it in the URL.
This strategy could also assist you in securing a domain name that has the specific extension you want. We would be happy to register a domain name for your corporate website on your request.
