How to choose a domain name

How do I choose a domain name?

Often people are unsure what makes a good domain name for their website; below are some basic hints and tips to help you make the decision.

Your Company Your Website

If you can get it, the domain name should be the same as your company name – this may seem obvious but sometimes people think they need a different kind of branding for their website. You don’t and you’re just weakening your brand and giving people more things to remember. For example if your company is called ‘Wizard News’ get ‘www.wizardnews.co.uk’ don’t go for ‘www.sorcerersonline.co.uk’. If that one is taken, you could try adding ‘uk’ to the end of the actual domain name www.wizardnewsuk.co.uk as it’s more likely to be available and is easy to communicate.

If you can’t get your company name at all choose the most accurate description you can, that closely matches what people might enter into search engines if they were looking for your kind of site: www.latestwizardgossip.co.uk

.com or .co.uk?

If your main place of business is the UK, get a .co.uk domain name – many people in the UK prefer to buy locally and it could give you that advantage. However, if your business can cater for all international clients and you have no preference for the UK, a .com could give your company that multinational feel. Alternative endings such as .net and .org can be suitable although they suggest more informational, non-profit sites. If you do choose one of these endings, be aware that if you don’t specify in your literature that you are using one of these endings, people may not try them as a matter of course and may not find you. Most other endings look tacky, for example the dreaded .biz.

Meaningful is memorable

Make it meaningful to be memorable – make sure it is something that is easy to say and instantly meaningful. You may want to use an abbreviation to keep it short, but if what your final domain name amounts to is a random string of letters or numbers, it makes it very unlikely to stick in someone’s head. Then you have the danger that even if they are looking for you specifically, they can’t find you simply because they’ve got a couple of the letters mixed up. www.wzdns.co.uk only has five letters, but is infinitely harder to remember and interpret than www.wizardnews.co.uk which has twice as many letters but is a meaningful semantic string. Also, don’t forget people rarely type in domain names these days, usually they either click links or use autocomplete (where the computer guesses what you’re typing and completes it for you).

Short and sweet

Having said that, don’t go overboard trying to get your meaning across in the domain name – yes, you want to tempt people to click it, but you can’t include your whole business history. Choose something like www.wizardnewsforallbuddingyoungwizardsintheuk.co.uk and you may as well hang up your wand now. As a rule of thumb, three of four words max.