subject: How To Choose a Name For Your Website [print this page] How To Choose a Name For Your Website How To Choose a Name For Your Website
One of the very first steps in building a website or blog is choosing your website name. I have listed below the most important criteria I encourage my clients to consider when brainstorming with them on domain names.
Branding This one is usually pretty simple for existing businesses as they have already tried to differentiate their brand from their local competitors but is extremely important for bloggers. Your website must strongly represent a brand that clearly defines you and makes you stand out from other competitors websites. The name you choose should strengthen and reinforce this brand.
Domain Name Equals Site Name Ensuring that your domain name relates to your website is a common practice that is used because people often remember a website by name rather than address. Ensuring that the site name and domain name are the same makes it easier for people to remember what to type to browse to your site.
K.I.S.S (Keep It Short and Simple) The shorter your domain name the easier it is to remember. Keeping your domain name short, meaningful and simple will make your sites name more memorable. Also, a short name looks better on printed advertising like brochures and business cards.
No Symbols,Hyphens or numbers Symbols, hyphens and numbers etc make your domain name harder to remember. If you need to use numbers I always spell them out rather than use the actual numbers. The risk with using hyphens is that you can end up with multiple websites all having very similar names like 'web-site-advice.com' and 'website-advice.com'.
Make Sure Its Unique This point related very closely to the example above of similarly named sites. You do not want your sites name to closely resemble the name of one of your competitors. You want your sites name to be unique so that it aids with your branding and the overall memorability of your site. You also don't want to gift your competitors 'free' visitors by having them make a spelling mistake or put a hyphen in the wrong place. Having a domain name that closely resembles another company especially larger companies can result in legal action due to copyright infringement.
Avoid '.Net', '.Org' etc. As a rule avoid anything other than a '.com' or one of its regional variants e.g '.co.nz' or '.com.au'.Using a '.com' usually ensures a visitor that the site they are visiting has legitimacy and isnt just an a gimmick or an internet marketing gimmick. However when searching for your domain name make sure that no one is using the '.net', or '.org' variations as this can confuse people that look for your business or industry in search engines.
One of the most useful tools I have used when searching for an available domain is the GoDaddy domain look up tool. This tool searches for domains and when returning results will list the availability of '.net', '.org' and other variants. It also shows potential variations on names if the name you searched for is unavailable.
