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The Right Approach to Choose a Domain Name for Your Business Website

Aamir Qutub
Aamir Qutub
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Choosing a domain name is one of the key essentials of a smarter website. You need to have a search engine friendly and a user-friendly domain name, to make your website easily searchable for your audiences.

The Importance of Choosing the Right Domain Name

A domain name provides a unique web address to your site for it to be located on the internet. Having an appropriate domain name would help your business come across as more reliable and professional for the target audiences.

A domain name keeps your branding on the internet intact and helps you retain it while you switch web hosts or content management systems.

A user-friendly and niche specific name can be very effective for adding to the search engine friendliness of your website.

How to Choose a Domain

  • Your domain name must be unique. A unique name makes it stand out from the competition.
  • Using keywords related to your niche can add to the SEO friendliness of your domain. Do a thorough keyword research, using tools like Google Keyword Planner and Ubersuggest to come up with search keyphrases that define your business.
  • Domain names must be easy to remember. They should preferably be related to the relevant industry. This practice helps the users to identify and relate to your business better.
  • You can go for an unrelated domain name in case you have a strong branding strategy to back it up.
  • Shorter domain names must always be preferred over longer ones, as they are more user-friendly and simple to promote.
  • Domains must not have numbers or hyphens to ensure they are search engine friendly.
  • You can also invest in acquiring misspelt variants of your domain to protect your business from the competition.
  • It is a must to keep the domain name original and not copy any name that already exists.

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Extensions

Choosing the right suffix for your domain is equally important. The .com extension is the most common extension used by websites

Some of the other commonly used domains include: .co, .net, .info, .org and .me.

.net is an extension often used for websites related to technology whereas .co and .biz are for businesses and companies.

.org is a domain extension commonly used by non-profit organisations.

Subdomains

Subdomains are prefixes of your domain that you can use to define certain sections of your website.

Here are some examples of subdomains:

www.blog.sitename.com
www.geelong.sitename.com

Subdomains help you create unique and smarter web addresses of content sections of your website that are related to a particular content or regional category.

You can also use subdomains to create self-serving segments for clients and franchisees.

Here are some key advantages of creating subdomains:

Subdomains are useful for regional marketing and local search engine optimisation. These are helpful in creating region-specific content for each geo-locations and tracking the marketing results separately.

Subdomains are linked up with the main domain, and the promotion efforts are useful in promoting the main website as well.
The cross-linking of each of the subdomains of the site helps in improving the ranking ability of the site.

The only disadvantage of using subdomains on your site is that one has to purchase separate web hosting accounts for each of the sub-domains.

Subdirectory

Subdirectories are also a useful alternative to subdomains for creating a search engine friendly URL structure of the business website. Here are some examples:

www.sitename.com/blog
www.sitename.com/product

Subdirectories are a cost-effective option for organising content on the site as one does not have to purchase a separate hosting account for subdirectories. Subdirectories are easier to manage and also let you target different locations.

One drawback, in this case, is that one has to review the content for from one place.

This hampers local promotions as each of the local pages can be treated as separate sites for local marketing efforts.

ccTLDs

Top level domains relevant to countries are called ccTLDs. These too are essential as far as search engine optimisation of a website is concerned.

An example of ccTLD is:

www.sitename.us

This sort of domain extensions shows the country specific origin of a website helping the site to rank on region searches.

One of the main drawbacks of a ccTLD is that the promotional efforts to such a domain for a particular domain does not benefit any other regional version of the same such as

www.sitename.au

So, if the business has an international presence in different countries, then promoting all the versions will require additional investment and resources.

domains-01

Source: www.moz.com

How to find and register your domain name?

There is a host of domain registration companies out there that provide services like business domain registration, hosting and privacy. These service providers help you to lookup for the best-suited domain for your business and make an appropriate choice.

Here is a list of popular domain registration services providers:

Flippa : A popular domain registration service, Flippa provides domain names at relatively competitive prices. You can also buy existing apps and websites on this platform.

NameCheap : This platform too, has a wide range of domains to choose. The service is fast and is known to be quite user-friendly.

HostGator is another very well known domain and hosting service provider. The prices on this platform are competitive and so is the storage space.

GoDaddy is another leading domain name, and hosting service provider. The platform has got a range of services and domains to choose.

Sedo If you are looking for popular domains which have already been bought earlier, then here is a place to find them.

Here some interesting facts about website domains:

domain-names-infographic

Source: DomainMarket.com

Choosing the right domain name for your business is extremely important for your business. One must do careful research and analysis, before registering a website domain name.

In your study, you should include the type of business you are in, the target market and of course, your competitors and their strategy.

The right choice of domain name and site structure can help business get long term SEO as well as business benefits.

Are you looking for a smarter website for your business? Enterprise Monkey helps you with strategizing and developing business websites to engage customers and generate leads for your business.

We assist you with the entire process of choosing and registering your domain to developing a website that has all the features that a modern business requires.

Aamir Qutub
Aamir Qutub
Aamir Qutub is the founder and CEO of Enterprise Monkey, has a sincere passion for innovation and startups. With an experience of around a decade, he is a proud co-founder of 4 technology startups, focusing on real-world problems and their solutions. He also loves to cook and spend time with his onlyborn.
Aamir Qutub
Aamir Qutub
Aamir Qutub is the founder and CEO of Enterprise Monkey, has a sincere passion for innovation and startups. With an experience of around a decade, he is a proud co-founder of 4 technology startups, focusing on real-world problems and their solutions. He also loves to cook and spend time with his onlyborn.

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