Would you like to select a domain name? Indeed! a good effort. In the world of the web, your presence can be accessed or felt with your digital location wherein you stay is your unique website which must have a domain name that can either make or break your business. And of course, it is the most important part of your site that makes you able to have a separate individual digital identity from the rest of the websites in the global space. Everyone is not tech-savvy at the beginning, hence before making a site one should know all the details as far as possible. As a beginner, before going to select a domain name, you may ask various questions like these:
- What kind of domain should I choose?
- Is domain essential for a website?
- Will domain name have an effect on the site?
These are some of the questions that may flash upon your mind as you are a newbie. Don’t worry. I am here to help you. I will guide you step by step. Just follow the guides till the end.
Now as per your first query, before going to select a domain name you should know a number of things like:
- What kind of business do you like to start?
- Depending on the type of business you have to find out and select a domain name. If you are going to launch a blog, then you should select a business-oriented name that matches your target.
- For a product or service, you ought to choose and match a similar name.
- If you cannot find such a name, then you can select any unique name that’s good and suitable for your niche.
As per the second question, I can say you in the affirmative. Because you cannot have a website without a domain. It’s a must. If there is no domain, there will be no website. you can express it in the mathematical equation in the following manner:
No domain=No website
Now, of course, you have estimated how important it is to select a domain name.
Against your last query I can say, of course, a domain name will either mend or end your business. A bad, abstrusive, immemorable and long string of words if used as a domain name, visitors cannot type and use with ease. That’s why the domain must be short and easy. To be more comprehensive let’s go through the following contents.
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Domain’s Essential Features
Already you have guessed some idea about how to select a domain name, still, for further clarification, I made it more simplified for your sake of you. Everyone who set up a site for business, education, sport, e-commerce or anything else could not succeed on account of being not careful in his setup. In this perspective, domain name too has some effects. It’s the first target that a visitor looks at while visiting your site. So, it must have some features to stand distinguished and identifiable from others. The essential features are discussed in the following steps.
Step 1:Domain should be readable and memorable
You have already known that the domain is the most vital part of a website. In common parlance, it indicates some idea of what kind it is. However, it doesn’t seem to be true for every case. A domain name should be clear, readable and memorable so as to gain more impression, popularity and attraction of the visitors.
Step 2:Short as far as possible
While going to select a domain name, make it short as far as possible. Because the URL that you put on the address bar of your browser will be more usable for the users if it is short. So, the shorter, the better. According to a study report by Geabler out of 1 million domain names the top 50 on average have approximately six characters in length and each one of the entire million has a length of 10 characters.
Step 3:Brandable and Unique
The domain name should be brandable and unique. For example, Youtube.com, Google.com, Facebook.com etc. On these sites, the domains stand unique and brandable. Because there are no similar domains with the same name in the web world. That,s why people like to use with more user experience. To put it in simple words, as a starter, while you are going to select a domain name, try to turn it into a brand. It is a great plus point as far as identity is concerned in the world of business as it helps you stand out with your own creativity, fashion, content and value. Thus said, a domain name is one of the contributing factors in building a separate brand that has a good effect on your online business intercourse.
Step 4:Concise, not too Longer
The domain name should be concise, consisting of fewer characters as far as possible. Though someone claims it may be composed of a maximum of 253 characters in length including the whole URL, however, it shouldn’t be too long. A very long name is time-consuming in typing, hard to recollect and will have a bad effect on the site’s visibility by visitors as a user experience. Domain’s maximum length may be upto 63 characters, however, it isn’t not recommended. According to a survey by buycompanynames out of the 470k sites, the most successful 80% of domains are composed of 6-17 characters, while the remaining 10.5% consisted of longer than 17 characters. So, look at the length and try to make it concise while you are about to select a domain name.
Step 5: Characters to be within 6-15
Most site owners do not know how to select a domain name. The most popular and frequently visited sites have domain lengths of 6-15 characters. That’s good a bit for the user’s convenience. If you would like to select a domain name for your business in future, try to limit your domain name to 6-15 characters. The bulk of the frequently visited websites has followed this rule. You can choose an alternative if you can’t find out such names as there are many domain sellers who already have registered thousands of domains to sell online to customers to earn a profitable amount of money.
Step 6 : No Double Letter
While making up your mind to select a domain name, try to avoid double letters as much as possible. It leads to typos that may annoy visitors and reduce potential customers. For example, don’t use ‘travel.XYZ, rather travel.XYZ. Here the latter is easier to type from the user’s end. Many people make this blunder and select a domain name without due care and insight.
Step 7: No Hyphen
You shouldn’t use hyphenated words as a domain name. Because, the majority of the visitors while typing your website’s URL, will incorrectly write and spell the domain without giving a hyphen that is prone to typos. It also decreases readability, and memorability and increases spammy behaviours. As for example, not Face-book.com but the correct is Facebook.com, though the former is grammatically correct. In these two examples, the latter is easier to type. This is why hyphens should be abandoned in the domain name for the convenience of customers. So, don’t use hyphens when you select a domain name.
Step 8: Avoid Using Numbers
Generally speaking, a domain name consisting of only letters is more popular, than a combination of numbers and letters. Don’t use numbers. If urgently needed, use it either at first or last, but not in the middle as it looks informal. Suppose you are going to offer 13 books to everyone who buys your full package. Here for this purpose, you can make such kind of domain as will indicate ’13’within it. So the required domain may be like these: 13bookoffer.com, 13booksoffer.com, bookoffer13.com or booksoffer13.com. But don’t use book13offer.com as it contains ’13’ within the middle of the domain. It may be confusing. So, avoid using numbers in the middle, rather use them at the first or the last when you select a domain name.
Step 9: Choose Popular Domain Extension
The Top Level Domain(TLD) too is an important part of the domain name that comes next to your second level domain, that’s to say, your site’s title and it is preceded by a single dot(.) such as .com, .org, .net, .info, .co, .io etc. According to Statista as of June 2020, the most widely used 5 TLDs in the namespace are .com(50.9%), .ru(6.4%), .org(4.7%), .net(3.4%) and .in(1.6%) which are followed by the others as per popularity and usage. Now you have learnt that dot com(.com) is the most popular domain extension that most users like to use for its universal recognition. So, I recommend you to add this after your domain if available. But, in case of unavailability of this, you can choose the next popular extension like .org or .net. So, be careful about domain extension when you are going to select a domain name for your site.
Step 10 : No Presence on Social Site
There are many social sites such as Facebook, Youtube, Vimeo, Tumblr, WordPress, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Mix, Flickr, Reddit, Quora, Medium, Snapchat, Twitter etc. You should take care of the name that you want to select as a domain for your future business. Before selecting your site’s name use social media name checker tool such as Knowem. It will check the desired word you put into its search box and show whether it is already occupied, used or available for usage.
Step 11 : Use Thesaurus if Needed
Selecting a good, brandable and unique word or pair of words is very important while you are going to build a website. But newbies are not always aware. Because, at an early stage, everyone lacks experience. The term you would like to use with popular TLDs for the site’s title is not always available as domain registration is going on increasing by leaps and bounds. So you can look into Thesaurus.com to find out words that are meaningful, easy to understand and readable. Many people, while going to select a domain name, look into this for convenience.
Step 12: Keyword-Based Domain
Use keyword-based terms as a domain if possible as it is an important factor for better SEO and SERPs. A meaningful and effective keyword when used as the site’s name, will boost its rank in the search engine, not too much, but a little bit. You can use keyword research tools like Google’s keyword planner for free. Every moment Google searches about 60,000 enquiries around the world. About 94% of mobile searches and 76% of desktop-based searches are done through this major search engine. So, while going to choose a domain name, use such words as having proper search volume and keyword value so that it can be crawled and indexed easily as well as quickly by the crawlers.
Step 13 : Check Domain name and probable Suggestions
The domain name which you want to select for registration should be attractive, unique and worthy of use. But it isn’t always available what you like to use. Because, nowadays, people are going to be more dynamic, and interactive and want to earn more and more through the internet. So, you can’t find out a particular word to be used for the said purpose but instead, you can add a word( or words) as a suffix or prefix depending on the outlook with the same particular word. You can do that with ease. No skill is required. Furthermore, for your convenience, you can use the domain name suggestion tool like Domainwheel . Another important domain name generator tool you can use free of cost is Nameboy. These tools will show you hundreds of meaningful and readable words as suggestions which can be used for your site’s name as the domain. Therefore, in order to select a domain name use the domain generators mentioned above.
Step 14 : Check Past History and Trademark
The probable domain name that you like to select and register for your business is a good effort but prior to selection, you ought to know whether it was in usage in the past, penalised by search engines and closed for malware injection —-is a matter that you should take into account with care and awe. It may be that a word registered before as a domain name, being available now for usage, you have selected for your site’s name may cause bad effect in SEO and search results, as you don’t know whether it was hacked by cybercriminals or deindexed by a search engine. Besides, if you register a name for your website’s title though it is occupied by others, you will incur a serious blunder. In this case, you will have infringed copyright violation. As a result, you have to pay a huge ransom as compensation as per ICANN’s rule. You will lose enthusiasm and vigour. All your bold undertakings will be nipped in the bud. So, in order to select a domain name, you ought to know its past history. As a beginner, you can ask which are the tools to check a website’s past history. I will recommend you the following tools which are free, such as:
Whois: It is 100% free. This tool will show you a number of domains with separate TLDs against a particular word along with its starting date, location and other details provided by the registrars. All the registered data of domain names are stored in the Whois database for proper management, applicability, analysis and usability checkup. Besides, it will display all the names of domains——-registered, available for registration, deleted, occupied, registered but available through purchase etc.
Whoisrequest: It’s another tool that can trace past history of domains. It will give you in detail the domain’s name, registrar country, server, its present status, registration date, expiry date etc. Besides, you can check name server change records if required.
Internet Wayback Machine: The Wayback Machine was founded by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat in 2001, about 18 years ago, with the sole purpose of universal access to knowledge. It can show you all defunct web pages, their histories like date of creation, expiry date and all other subsequent changes.
Step 15 : Finally Register
Already you have gone through many steps in order to select a domain name that should stand unique, brandable and possess a number of other unparalleled features such as no presence on social sites, neither too long nor too small, and rather concise in length and consisting of 2-15 characters implying a particular meaning relating to your niche that you have anticipated. Another important point that users very often do is to make delays in registration. As a serious business owner, you shouldn’t do that. Because it may be that you have selected a good word for your domain but owing to delay others have registered it instantly. Such kind of occurrence I too encountered. So, whenever you select a domain name, get it registered as far as quick. Don’t make a delay or lest you will not find that.
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