You may think that finding a good domain name is too challenging because all the best ones have already been taken, but you‘d be surprised at what you can find if you look hard enough. It’s true – you could spend hours searching for the right domain url for your website, but here are some tips you can use that can shorten that time down drastically.
You may already have an established website with a domain name that has been around for a few years. And that’s great, but if your website is brand-new or if you don’t even have one yet, there might be a better selection for a domain than you currently have. Also there are advantages to building other satellite sites related to your industry that drive traffic to your main site, so you may want to look for more domain possibilities.
You may think that the name of your company is the best choice for your URL, but that is not necessarily the case. Unless you’re Nike or Prada with a well-established brand, no one will really care what your company name is. They are more interested in what they are looking for. This being the case, it is almost always better to look for a domain name that has your top keyword phrase in it.
A good tool to use for this is Google’s Adwords keyword tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
-here you can enter in your top keyword phrases relating to your business, and it will give you the results of the highest searched keyword phrases relating to your industry (online vertical). This list will also let you know, what pages you could be creating for your website as well as your Google Adwords and other PPC campaigns.
From this list, you will want to choose a keyword phrase that is perhaps the most searched and most related to your business as your domain name. Doing this will add a little boost in the search engines when people search for the keyword phrase in the search engine results pages (SERPs for short). Obviously this is only going to work for one keyword phrase so make it your primary.
ICANN regulates domain names on the Internet for top-level domains. Top-level domains have been assigned specifically for the Internet to help visitors find your website. Some of these include:
- .com
- .net
- .org
- .biz
- .info
- .mobi
- .name
And in order to register a top level domain, you will need to do a search with an ICANN accredited domain registrar such as www.godaddy.com. If your domain is already taken, they will suggest some alternatives for you. These usually aren’t what you’re looking for.
I would recommend that you go after a “.com” in most cases. As with my experience this always seems to rank better than other top-level domains, and is the most popular. Dot com is also the designator of a commercial website. So unless you are creating a network or organization. This should be your first choice.
However, if your website is specifically localized to a certain area that you are confident your business will not expand out of the country (for example, you have a retail store or brick-and-mortar business), and your sales are confined within that country, then I suggest you go for a “.ca”, “.uk”,“.us”, etc. domain name (and the “.com” if available), as it has been my observation that “.ca’s” do just as well as .com’s, if not better on google.ca and the same likely applies in the UK, Australia, and other location specific Google search directories. If however your sales are not confined to a country, you are always better to go with the “.com”. This way International visitors will not avoid your site because you are a “.ca”.
If you’re looking to register a “.ca”,”.us”,”.uk”, etc. domain name, you will have to find a registrar in that country who can register it.
If you can’t find the exact domain name you’re looking for, try these alternatives:
- use plurals where appropriate
- consider adding a suffix to the end of the domain name: “s”, “ed”, “ing”, “er”,
(example: instead of “dogtrainer.com” use “dogtraining.com”) - try adding hyphens in between words
- consider adding “i”, “my”, or “the” to the beginning of the domain name
(example: “thedogtrainer.com”) - consider adding a prefix to the beginning of the domain name
- consider adding “blog”, “network”, “forum”, “tips”, “news”, “site”, “net”, “online”, “guru”, “info”, “expert”, etc., at the end of the domain name
(example: “dogtrainingtips.com”) - consider a .net or.org domain name
Hopefully this will give you enough tips in successfully finding the perfect domain name you are looking for that will give you an edge in the search engine marathon – and if you are looking for web design or search engine optimization services, please feel free to call us at: 1-888-688-6326.
