Selecting A Domain Name – Learn How to Make the Right Choice!

Selecting the right domain name is an important part in establishing your web site and should be considered the most important first step in establishing your online presence. The right domain name may be critical to your success by being easy to remember, relevant to your web site and may even affect your search engine rankings.

So, in order to make the process of selecting a domain name easier, we’ve compiled the following pointers for you:

Keyword, company name or brand name – what’s the best choice?

When selecting a domain name there are three different routes you can take.

1. Select a domain name based on a keyword. Let’s pretend that the word “example” is a keyword for a product, like a “golf club”. Then you may want to target the domain name “example.com” as it directly refers to that keyword and what people may search for.
2. Suppose your company name is “Example Corporation” and you sell golf clubs, then the domain “example.com” may not be a great choice, as it doesn’t refer to what you sell.
3. If you sell the “Example” brand of golf club then the “example.com” domain name will probably not be available, or may infringe on trademark, so it may not be a great choice. It’s not a good idea to infringe on a Trademark, however, you may be able to choose a good domain that represents you sell the “Example” brand, such as “example-sales.com”. 

Ultimately, your decision should be based on the context of your site, e.g. if you’re selling a product and want to promote your site via keywords and brands and you want to maximise the potential for better search engine results, or if you’re just representing your business name and that’s all that is important. Your choice can also be affected by the next points.

1. Get multiple domains – There’s nothing to say that you can’t have multiple domain names. You can have a main domain name, then numerous other domain names that either point directly to your main site or areas within your site directly related to the relevant domain. For instance, suppose your business name is “Example Pty Ltd” and you sell golf clubs, then you could have “example.com” as your main domain, but have another domain name such as “examplegolfclubs.com”. The point is you can get variations on a theme or name, but you can also consider mis-spelling of a name too, e.g. “exampel.com”.
2. Keep it Simple – As a general rule keeping a domain name as short as possible is a good idea. The underlying objective here is to make your domain name easy to remember. Also consider how someone tells another person about your domain name. The domain “example.com” might be good as it is short, easy to remember and easy to pass on. Another popular technique is to make a domain name the first letter of each word in your business name. This can be a good idea but it is no good if it doesn’t adhere to the rules of making it easy to remember and pass on. For instance, if you have the domain “examplegolfclubsales.com”, reducing that domain to “egcs.com” might not be a good idea as it is not that easy to remember and it has no representation to what you actually do.
3. Hyphenated domains – There is a lot of different opinions about whether hyphenated domains are better than non-hyphenated domains. There does, however, seem to be a general accepted rule that hyphenated domain names are easier for the search engines to index. For example, the domain name “examplegolfclubs.com” might be easier to pass on to someone, and have them not make a mistake when typing it, than “example-golf-clubs.com”, but the latter might be easier for a search engine to index on a search for the term “golf” or “golf clubs”. The best bet is to get both if you can.
4. A “.com” or “.com.au”, what’s the best choice? – The best choice for an extension of a domain name can usually be determined by where you conduct business. For example, if you’ll only ever conduct business in Australia then a “.com.au” extension will be a good choice because it clearly represents an Australian domain extension, and people are comfortable with that. However many people can, when telling someone else about a site or referring to the domain name, forget to append the “.au” on to the name and refer to it as “example.com” instead of “example.com.au”. In this case it’s probably better to use, and promote, the “.com.au” extension, but get the “.com” extension and point it to your site too. Don’t be too concerned if you get a great “.com.au” domain name, and that extension is the best choice, but you can’t get both.
5. Make your web site and domain name the same! – It is definitely a bad idea to have the domain name and the web site named a different thing. If you’re company name is “Example Corporation” and you sell golf clubs, then don’t promote the domain “examplegolfclubs.com”, but name, or brand, the site as “Example Corporation”. Call the site “Example Golf Clubs” and include on the site, “brought to you Example Corporation”. Another good idea is to name your site, AFTER you have secured your domain. If you are starting a web site then find the most suitable domain name and call your web site that.
6. Do it now! – If you find a domain name available that is relevant, just register it. Don’t wait until you have a web site built and ready to go online, just register it straight away. We’ve seen great domain names available one day; have not registered them there-and-then, only to find them gone the next day.

Now you have the low-down on selecting the right domain name for you just go ahead and do it. Take the time to do extensive research on available domain names, and then do it!

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