Hawaii SEO – Tips in Choosing the Right Domain Name for Your Website (Part 2)
Welcome to the second half on the tips on how to choose a domain name for your website. If you missed the first part, kindly refer to Tips in Choosing the Right Domain Name for Your Website (Part 1).
Without further ado, below are 3 more tips for you.
3. Simplicity is key.
A good guage to test if your chosen domain name is effective is to spell it out. However, if you have to spell it out multiple times, there is something wrong. I shared on the previous post that the domain name should be easy to spell and easy to remember.
So, if your audience is having a hard time typing your domain name on their web browser, it’s time to choose another name. The main point here is to keep it simple. Of course, you do not want people to misspell your website and end up in a totally different site.
An example of misspellings and typos is the website Flickr, which is a image hosting website that allows people to share their own captured snaps. However, four years later, Flickr ended up buying the domain name Flicker.com because a lot of people tend to type the word Flicker instead of Flickr.
Be careful when you decide to choose oddly spelled words. You might end up like Flickr; the company had to buy 2 domain names to help redirect visitors to the main Flickr website.
4. Prioritize the “.com” extension.
According to Domain Name Stat, the top domain name extension is “.com”. In fact, 41.27% of the market share is under the .com category. Hence, if you are looking for a name, do not forget the most preferred name extension is still .com.
However, times are changing. If the .com name is already taken, you might want to consider other options. Other extensions included in the top 10 list are: .tk, .cn, .net, .de, .org, .uk, .ru, .info, and .top.
Numbers don’t lie because the .com domain name remains to be the most credible. If it is still unclaimed, then, go purchase a .com name for your website. People automatically associate .com to every website name. Even the people who aren’t computer-savvy, they would instinctively type .com.
5. Stick to brandable names.
Remember, your domain name will be your brand. Try to stick with your brand name or company name if they aren’t taken yet.
The domain name should speak for itself. Ideally, when you hear or type a name, you should automatically know what it is about. Just take a look at the list of the Top 500 Websites by Moz, and you will see that the popular sites are mostly brand names like Apple, Amazon, Adobe, Microsoft, Google, and so on.
Keywords also play a significant role. By using relevant keywords, people can easily tell what your website is about. For instance, in the same top 500 list, keywords are added to the domain names. Look at Imageshack; you can easily tell that this website deals with images.
The same is true for PhotoBucket and for iStockPhoto. People can tell that the websites are obviously about photos. Adding relevant keywords in your domain name can boost your rank in Google.
It will be difficult to find a domain name with your desired keywords. So, you may have to brainstorm on other creative ways on how to mix and match certain words.
Read more on Tips in Choosing the Right Domain Name for Your Website (Part 3)