How to Choose aRelevantand Effective Domain Name

Choosing a domain name for your website or blog is often much more difficult than it seems. It is even a headache for most beginning entrepreneurs.

A domain name is much more than an address for your website. It is the showcase of your website in your communication campaigns, and therefore an essential factor to its visibility, credibility and reputation. It can be considered a Virtual Real Estate. Domain names are economic goods whose value can amount to several million dollars. Because choosing a relevant domain name is sometimes difficult, freeparking.nz offers practical advice.

So how do you choose a domain name for your blog or website? This is the question that we try to provide answers to in this article.

The goal here is not to meet all the criteria (that's impossible), I would just like to give you some guidelines to consider when choosing your domain name.

1. Choose theRight Extension

a) Generic and distinctive domain names

If your core business is not done on the Internet, it is in your interest to reserve a domain name which consists of the name of your company or your brand name. Otherwise, you will need to find a name for your website and this is where things get complicated.

Some domain names describe a thing or concept, they are generic domain names. Other domain names, like Google.com have no meaning. They are called distinctive domain names.

b) Generic domain names

They inspire trust. They have the advantage of describing the theme of the website. The user therefore knows the thematic content he/she will find after clicking the URL and it gives the user more confidence.

Because they are composed of words in everyday language, generic domain names are easy to remember. The prospects quickly associate the activity of the site to the domain name, which increases the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

Better SEO: Generic domain names have a better visibility in search engines when the user queries are composed of keywords present in the domain. This advantage is however not significant because the ranking on search engines depends on many factors.

c) Distinctive domain names

Attractive because of their originality

The distinctive domain name is by far the most common. Webmasters appreciate its originality and marked identity. By choosing a distinctive domain name, you appropriate a term, which will reflect your personality and originality.

By choosing a distinctive domain name, the main challenge is to ensure that your prospects associate your activity to your domain name.

In the search for a website or blog, the vast majority of Internet users almost always begin by typing the extension .com at the end rather than .net, .info, .tv or any other available extension. Why deprive yourself of this opportunity to appear before your competitors?

In order for a website to be credible in the eyes of users, it is important to choose a relevant domain name extension. There are two types of extensions: generic extensions (.com, .info, .net, .org,) and geographic extensions (.com, .nz, .eu, .de, .us, ...).

If you are targeting a specific territorial market, for example the UK market, go for the geographical extension of the targeted territory. If your website targets a multinational audience, then opt for a generic extension.

2. It must be short

Shorter is better in this case. It's that simple.

Preferably opt for a short domain name for ease of memorization. The human brain is an eternal slacker which tends to "skimp through" any name too long to read. The less a domain name requires intellectual resources to be memorized, the more its impact is strong and its ability to be stored considerable. Another benefit is that choosing a short domain name limits the risk of typos.

For example: Imagine you want to create a blog about workingfrom home using the internet and you choose the name www.theworkfromhomeonlineblog.com or www.the-work-from-home-online-blog.com.

Awful!

These are the kinds of domain namesyou should never create. It's not because you are told to include your keywords in your domain name that you should opt for ugliness and complication.

3. The simplicity of a domain name is an asset

On the Internet and in the streets, we are bombarded daily with advertising messages. A person receives about 2000 of these stimuli every day, many of which contain domain names. Only a handful of these names are stored. To facilitate this, a domain name which is simple, easy to pronounce and remember is a considerable asset.

A good domain name is easily transmitted from one individual to another. Again, it is 100 times easier to retain a relatively short domain name. So choose something easy to pronounce.

4. Avoid hyphens

This part is closely related to the second. Imagine that your domain name is: www.the-work-from-home-online-blog.com... tell me please how you intend to give it to a friend on the phone or to a client through an online support.

On the phone it sounds something like this: "Hi, my name is MarielaVelyne and my website is www dot the dash work dash from dash home dash online dash blog dot com." Weird right?

A hyphen in a domain requires you to always specify each time you give the URL of your blog to a third party. I am not saying a domain name with a hyphen cannot be good. It’s just not the best option.

5. Use keywords

Well, I know it sounds a bit contradictory but rest assured this is not the case. If you want to create a blog on installing affordable blogs for instance, you can always choose a name like: www.affordableblog.com. It is short, easy to remember and contains keywords related to the topic of the blog.

You might choose the top 5 keywords that describe the theme of your blog or your niche quite well. Once that is done, try to create combinations of words.

6. You Can Use Your Name

In creating awebsite to help bloggers and those who want to generate income on the internet, you canchoose a domain name which simply bears your name.

In any case, always choose something simple and easy to pronounce and remember. Do not worry about the words, because for search engines, what matters most is the relevance of your content and not the keyword that you added to your domain name.

7. Make sure it is available

Before registering or buying a domain name, make sure it is available and does not violate trademark law. A generic domain name does not pose any significant risk of conflict with the rights of third parties, unlike the distinctive domain names. For these, it is better to consult Internet sites such as the National Institute of Industrial Property which provide trademark database.

To prevent potential competitors or dishonest people registering a domain too close to yours, it is advisable to register variants of the domain name: with and without hyphen, plural and singular, with and without articles in several extensions, with different spellings,... All these variants can then redirect to the primary domain name of the website.This can be done easily if you get your domain names from a registrar like Freeparking.co.nz.