How to choose your perfect domain name
Choosing perfect domain name
Website hosting, building and design are nothing without the perfect domain name. Companies can succeed or be squandered off the back of effective or ineffective domain names and as the amount of websites steadily increase – daily – there was never a better time to seriously consider the impact a poorly chosen domain name can cost your website. If you are interested in website hosting, then companies such as Names.co.uk are a great place to start your web hosting search. Names.co.uk offer free domain names with all their website hosting packages, as well as other benefits such as storage space, bandwidth and email accounts. Before you can start putting your grand website plans into action, take time in choosing your domain name.
Here are some factors to consider:
In order to be found, be findable
If you want your website to be found by either your friends and family, or potential business customers, your domain name has to reflect the searchable content of your website. Think about what people might type into a search engine in order to stumble upon your site. Write them down. For example, if you’re setting up an arts website on which you want to sell pieces of artwork, then your terms of phrase might include art for sale, beach landscapes or oil on canvas. You should consider these as domain ideas as matching your domain name to what your users want makes your site much more findable on search engines.
Short and sweet
The best websites, and the most memorable, are the ones with the shortest names. Often just one word is the most effective. Make sure your website name is memorable, easy to type and not too long. Put yourself in the shoes of a casual internet user and think of the sites you can remember off the top of your head. Think, ebay, Amazon, YouTube and Facebook. These incredibly famous sites would be nowhere without their easy to remember and spell domain names. If you are website hosting from a business perspective, think of the bigger picture. Will your domain name fit on a business card, for example?
Typing matters
If you can, avoid using hyphens in your domain name. This is not because this makes your name any less searchable, but they are problematic from the end user’s perspective. People simply do not remember where the hyphens go. Your domain name will therefore be misspelt. Miss-hyphenations can lose a massive amount of your website’s traffic. Hyphenated domains also send out the negative message that you couldn’t get your first choice of domain name. For example, if you are setting up a business website for your company called ‘party cupcakes’, you would rather have ‘www.partycupcakes.com’ than ‘www.party-cupcakes.com’ as the hyphen will often get missed out and your potential customer could land on a competitor’s website.
