Welcome, everyone! We are going to discuss choosing domain names and in fact, there are a few things that will help you guide in your domain name choices. It could be that you are starting a new brand, could be you have an existing brand, you are trying to take it online or maybe you are working with clients who are taking their brand online. It could be that you are starting a new company, any of these ways you are going to need a website and before you do that you should really think long and hard about the domain name that you choose. In fact, the brand name that you choose and how that’s represented through your domain name online.
Domain names have a massive impact all over the web in terms of search to social media results to referring links to trap in traffic, list of places that your domain name impacts your brand and your online marketing and we can’t ignore this.
So first thing is that the brand is for choosing a domain name- Make it brandable.
Meaning when you hear the domain name you hear yourself or someone else? Say does it sound like a brand or doesn’t sound like a generic right! So that means, hyphens and numbers are a real problem because they don’t make something sound like a brand name and make it sound generic or they make it sound strange for example:- Let’s imagine that we are starting together our new company. It is a website that provides cake recipes and potentially sales in cake related e-commerce products on it. If I tell you that I have cakebakeshop.com well! That is hard to brand, hard to say it, hard to remember. Speaking up this, is this brand memorable? Is it right to try to use generic keywords? strictly No! No! Generic keyword string is really tough to remember, really tough to stand out as a brand. You want something unique which means to try and avoid those acting partial keyword matched domain names.
They tend not to do so well in fact if you look at the numbers that we see in co-relation studies you can see that over past 10 years they have done nothing but trend down over time in terms rankings and the ability to show in the search results. It’s dangerous. I would probably stay away from something like a cakereceipiesonline.com, I think that’s cake.com may be that’s getting a little bit better cakeofficianado.com. It sounds brandable but a little bit hard to say maybe its a definitely unique definitely liked. Cakelabs.com very brandable, unique memorable, stands out. I am going to remember it, It was kind of scientific connotations to it.
Now the second fact is – make it pronounceable.
Why is it so important that it should be pronounceable? Most people are going to be typing this in or they are going to be clicking on the link. So why does it matter? and in fact, it matters because of a concept called process influencing the bias that human beings have been essentially remembered and have more positive associations with things that we can easily say and easily think about and that includes irreconcilability in our own points. This is going to be different depending on the language that you are targeting and which countries you are targeting but certainly if you can’t easily say the name and others are not easily able to guess how it is to say that name you are going to loose that memorability and all that benefits of the brand ability that you created.
So I might stay away from things like flowereggsH20.com. It’s clever don’t get me wrong, its unique, it’s clever, it might even be brandable but it’s very difficult to pronounce and to recall and when you see it you don’t know that zero is a ‘0’, there are questions about what it is necessarily mean or not.
Pastaliberty.com even it is trouble saying it. I will stay away from it. It is getting too clever for yourself many domain names try to do that. I might say you what something like landofnoodles.com doesn’t fulfill every requirement that we have got here , it is definitely pronounceable, easy to remember , these are easy words.
The Third thing is – make it as short as possibly can. But no shorter.
Meaning obey these other rules before you just go for length. But length matters because of the processing influencing stuff which we talked about before but fewer characters. A domain name has to be easier to type, easier to say, to share , the lesser it get shortened on social media sharing platforms and in search results, right! When you have seen long domain names they get compressed so they might not be shown fully or the URL might get cut off . All those kinds of things may happen, therefore shortest possible is definitely better.
I might go something shorter for like mycake.com but be careful about going too short. For ex: – cakesci.com is pretty good domain name. Cakesci.com , now with this I have lost that pretty announce ability and the little bit of that memorability, so it is little bit tougher its clearly a brand but its a little awkward. I would probably stay away from that one and I will stick with cakesci.com
The fourth thing is – Bias to .com–
I know its 2018 why are we so talking about .com, the internet spins around it for 20+ years and why is this .com matters so much when there is so many TLD’s extension options and the answer is again this is the most recognized , most easy and easily accessible brand outside.
But process influencing says we should go with something easy that people have an association with already and .com is still the primary thing that non technical savvy folks have an association with, if you want to build up a very brand able domain that can do well! You want that .com and probably eventually if you are very successful you are going to have to try and go capture it anyway.
If it’s unavailable my suggestion is to go with the .net,.co,.in. If there is a domain name macroniman.net what I potentially think about that if I could not get the .com yeah possibly I was targeting a little bit more tech savvy audience and if I was pretty sure macroniman.com would be owned by a scholar or owned by a restaurant somewhere there I really don’t have to worry about competition issue with it. I might use it.
Fifth thing is – Super obvious but please avoid names that influence on another company or another organizations existing trademark or could be confused with that trademark and you have to be very careful here
Because its not what you thinking could be confused its whether you think any judge in jurisdiction in which they might take legal action against you. So consider those 2 things to be potentially represented or potentially confuse the both. So talk with your attorney /legal professional about this, if you have legal concerns but there is a danger, it does happen regularly through out the webs history where a trademark owner would come in and sue a domain owner someone who is owning the domain and using it for business purposes. This can create brand confusion which is hard for your brand ability.
The sixth thing is that – make the domain name instantly intuitive.
If you believe that number of your target audience is to which you are trying to reach now and in the future I could immediately associate the domain name with a good guess with what they think you do.
That is a big positive . OK! If you are able to look at your domain name and I am guessing this, so something clever and subtle like librarythreafs.com OK! Once I get to your site I might see its sort of a playful word game there and savor at food but its too clever. In my opinion and it doesn’t instantly suggest your majority of your audience what you do. Pastaperfected.com that’s obviously intuitively about what it is going to be and anyone from the audience could figure it out.
The seventh thing is- If you can’t get a keyword mentioned in your domain name,
Google for it but if you are trying to target what we called “keyword range” or keyword targeted domains.
I would generally stay away from those, actually. There is a lot of association or negative association that users and search engines have about them.
I would stay away from them . So you don’t necessarily need to have a keyword richness to it.
The eighth thing is – If your domain name is not available, it is ok to go out and either suffix or prefix it.
It is OK to use an alternate TLD extension that we talked about previously and it is OK to be little bit creative with your brand for ex: let’s say my brand name is pastatera may be I already got a shop somewhere may be in USA and I have been selling cakes and pasta on shop and now I am going online with it. It is OK for me to do something like the pastatera.com or teracakeshop.com or even teracakeshop.net, I could , if I wanted to be very targeting the keyword and much more tech savvy and was aware about brand industry difficulties I could considerably go with some thing like tera.pasta, but I can get a little broader in fact before going with something like eatattera.com.
So with these facts in mind about choosing your domain I would love to here from all of you about your domain choice and your domain name biases and what you think is working in 2018 and potentially not working and hopefully you liked this article.
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