Website Owner’s Complete Guide 2-in-1:
Choosing Domain and Hosting - Part I
How to Choose a Domain? Everyone who is building a website, or planning to do it faces this problem - how to choose aproper domain name. The answer to this question is hard to explain in a couple of words,that is why we have created this ultimate guide that we hope will help you to choose the best domain name for your online presence. Pick Up Proper Words, Website is a necessity for many businesses along with it is a way of entertaining for manyusers. Therefore, hundreds of new websites emerge every day. In its turn, it becomes harderto find a short, not confusing, easy to remember, and catchy domain name which is stillavailable and won’t make a hole in your pocket. Our simple tips may be valuable for you andhelp you overcome tedious domain name search.
Choose a Branded Domain Name
In general, Top 10 websites in SERPs with industry related keywords are also Top 10 rankingwebsites with branding keywords. It means that users search for your business or product’sname before they enter your website. There is a widespread but quite a wrong thought to usea generic domain name like “shoes.com” (for companies selling shoes). Such a domain nameprobably costs a lot, and we would not even guess how much exactly. This idea is not sogood as it seems, because if you are looking for shoes online, you may already have somebrands in mind. Therefore, it’s more likely your search term would be not “shoes”, but a kindof branded name “ugg.com” or a world-known company name “zappos.com”. It explains whyyou should tie your brand name with a domain name. It may happen that your desired domain name is owned by someone else. What’s then? Itdepends on how crucial it is for you to get this specific domain. In case it is more than justimportant, you can try to buy the domain name from its owner. Find the whois.com info of theowner and contact him to know if he wants to sell this name. You may be ready to pay morefor such a domain name than for a new one. If you have a little budget because you are juststarting your business, think about a cheaper alternative. Don’t Focus on Keywords Too Much, Don’t overestimate the role of keywords when choosing a domain name. Many people pay too much attention to keywords and wrongly base the domains on these ‘right’ words alone. It is not a primary task to use your main keyword in the website’s URL. Absolutely different case is when your website name includes an industry-related keyword and you have a chance to get a laconic domain with both your brand name and primary keyword. This is a perfect option though. You should never neglect the keywords, but the key for high rankings is not the main one in your domain name. The best way to choose a domain name is to make an accent on brand, simplicity, and availability. Follow the KISS Principle, There is no doubt you want to be a company with a great website that everyone can remember, visit again and share with friends. Therefore, don’t use difficult, long, mind-bending words, also try to avoid any complexities like numbers, symbols, double letters, etc. Make your best to pick the name with one possible spelling as this will make it easier for users to find and reach you. In general, the domain name could be up to 67 characters, but it would be impossible to remember. The best length is of 10 characters - try to keep it. Choose the Domain Name Which You Don’t Need to Explain, When you are choosing a domain name, think how clear it is. Will you need to explain it, when telling someone? And will you be able to pronounce it over the phone or at a noisy place? Imagine that your domain is “designwebsiteswithfabulous.com”, and you need to spell it: “DE-S-I-G-N then W-E-B-S-I-T-E-S then W-I-T-H then F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S dot com”. When looking at these words separately, we may guess that it is a design company named “Fabulous”. If you are going to tell this domain name to someone who is not very good at English spelling, you will lose a potential website visitor. Make sure your website domain name doesn’t require extra explanations. Avoid Hyphens and Numbers, The keywords with hyphens are distinguished by search engines well, though we would recommend you to avoid hyphenated names (if it is optional). In case a user has heard your domain name from someone and wants to find you on the web, he or she will probably not use hyphens. This can lead to bad results for you, as a user can open a competitor’s website instead of yours. Another side of this issue is when you need to tell someone your domain name, you may spoil it with “dashes”: “i-create-websites” - “i dash create dash websites”. Numbers can make a domain name confusing, too. Tell someone your website is “creativedesigns21” and he will never find or remember it. Whether a number should be typed as a number or as a word, and how is this number associated with you? Think About the Extension, There are around 117 million .COM, 15 million .NET and 10 million .ORG domains on the web as of February 2015. A .COM is registered nearly every second all over the world and there is a statement that 100% of Fortune 500 companies have a .COM. We can’t disagree with these facts and recommend you to pick .COM as a top-level domain. One more important argument to support .COM is that many users think that businesses which have .NET or .BIZ domain names failed to pick an appropriate .COM. We would not like to offend webmasters whose websites are with .NET, .BIZ or .ORG domains. Also, we should admit that .ORG domains are good for institutions and non-profitable organizations. If you own a local business, and you are not interested in the international audience (for example, you run a local food delivery service, a car wash service or pet training center), it is better to use a country-specific domain. There is a huge benefit that you get from such domain: clients who are potentially interested in services you provide understand that you are a local company and that’s what they are looking for. Finally, if an insurance company operates in Germany, the customers would rather go for a company with a German domain instead of the international one.
Keep Copyright Issues in Mind
Make sure you are not violating any of website owners’ copyright exclusive rights with your domain name. Check everything properly on copyright.gov before you make any decision related to domain names. Never use names with branded keyword like “facebookthemes” “adobehelper”. Many influential companies take this issue seriously and if you use their branded keywords for your domain name, get ready for troubles. They won’t doubt to sue you. Search for Available Names with Domain Generators, Domain generators, or search engines, offer you an easy way to check if a particular domain is still available. In addition, you can search for relevant suggestions on domain names for your business with these tools. You can try these services BustAName.com or NameBoy to pick the domain name for your website. Further in this book you will find a big collection of useful tools to help you choose your personal domain name. After you have made a decision with your domain, we recommend you to check if it is “clean”. This applies to you if you are buying a domain name from an existing owner or you are thinking about one of the recently expired domains. Google will show you all existing backlinks to this domain, just type in search: link:www.yoursite.com. E.g., you want to check the website “bestdesigns.com”, then type link:www.bestdesigns.com in the Google search. Alternatively, you may use Wayback Machine or any related service to check your future domain name. Choose a Reliable Domain Registrar, Make a deal with the most reputable and reliable domain registrars. When you purchase a domain from a new, not well-recognized company, you risk to lose your domain name if the company goes out of business. The largest registrars like GoDaddy, Enom, Hover or NetworkSolutions provide good services. Though, if your budget is limited, some of them may be too expensive for you. By reason of you are a current or future MotoCMS user, we recommend you to use the Bluehost web hosting service. It registers domain names for free in case you purchase their hosting plan. The MotoCMS developers find Bluehost a trustworthy hosting provider, and it is compatible with Moto CMS. Register Your Domain for the Maximum Available Period, If you are creating a website to run a business for a long time, you would better register your domain name for as long as possible (the maximum period is usually 10 years). Search engines give some kind of benefits to websites registered for a long time. Many experts claim that websites registered for a year can’t reckon upon search engines’ trust. And you probably know how much trust means for SERP results. Take care of this beforehand if don’t want to regret later.
7 Tools for Choosing a Domain Name
We have researched the web to create a list of useful and feature-rich tools, which are supposed to help you find a good domain name for your future website. Surely, this list doesn’t include all tools available on the web. Also the tools are listed randomly, and the tool we feature first is not obligatory the best one. You may try a few of them before decide which one fits you best. 1. Domain Tools, This service gives you full information on any domain name, IP address or nameserver, owner and what it was used for. 2. Domize, It is a safe and fast domain search engine. Besides that it checks a domain availability, it gives you data on whether registered domains are available on the second market or they are expiring soon. 3. DomainsBot, This advanced search engine provides available domain suggestions, expiring domains and “whois” lookup. 4. Dot-o-mator, This domain search tool offers you to choose the name from existing ones or type your own beginning and ending words, which it combines automatically. If you like the name you get, check it for availability right on the same page. 5. Domainr, This tool searches good domain names for you and it revises the most popular domains of other owners. 6. NameMesh, This domain hunting tool allows you to check availability of the most common TLDs like .COM, .NET, .ORG. Plus, it checks the hyphenated version of the domain name you are interested. 7. Panabee, This domain search engine provides a simple way to search for domain names, app names, and company names. It supports all popular international domain names like .CO.UK, .IN, and COM.AU. We have offered you a number of solutions to solve the domain search issues. Build a wise strategy to find a nice and memorable name for your website. And remember that domain search is a creative process.