Just like a business name, a domain name is one of the most important aspects to your website and entire online presence. Even with this being the case, many people still overlook the importance of their domain name and the role they play which ultimately leads to the registration of a name that may have negative repercussions in the future. Regardless of the type of website you have, the kind of business you run or your future online intentions, choosing the right domain name can make a huge impact on how successful you and your website will ultimately be.

Brand Is Important

Choosing a domain name that is memorable and effectively promotes the name and nature of your business or website is important in ensuring it plays the part you expect it to. A domain name should be brandable or, if it’s for a business, reflect the name of the business which ultimately gives your website a more professional and established image. If you’re creating a website for your local lawn mowing business called “Mates Landscaping” for example, the best choice of domain name would be something along the lines of mateslandscaping.com.au. It reflects the business name, gives an obvious overview of what the website is about and is easy to remember.

Short and Simple

There is nothing worse than an extremely long domain that, not only takes a while to type, but becomes quite difficult to remember. Choosing a short and to-the-point domain name is one of the best decisions you will make, particularly if you look at the long term benefits.

For example, take a look at the following domain name:
“australianmadedressesforwomen.com.au”
Firstly, it’s so long that is just looks messy and it may take people a few moments to break it down word for word to work out exactly what it says. It also doesn’t follow the guidelines set out above for being a brandable domain. Imagine running a radio advertisement, that only have a limited amount of time, with the sole intention of attracting to new visitors and customers to your website. Choosing a domain name like this makes it fairly difficult for people to either remember or quickly write down while hearing the advertisement. This isn’t good for business at all and a far better option may have been “aussiedresses.com.au”.

By going against the grain here and registering a long and hard to remember domain name you’ll only be hurting your future success and potentially pushing website visitors away.

Use of Hyphens

A common practice when a preferred domain name is unavailable/ already registered, is to include a hyphen between 1 or 2 of the words in order create a similar one that is available. Unfortunately this is one of the worst decisions you can make for a number of reasons. The most important being that many people will forget to include the hyphens when they try to visit your website, which means that instead of going to your website they will actually end up on your competitors website who shares the similar domain name. The use of hyphens also makes your domain name longer and more complicated than it needs to be, as discussed above. Essentially, when choosing a domain name, if it needs to have a hyphen then it would be best to look for an alternate domain instead.

Choosing the right domain names for your website(s) is one of your most important tasks when creating an online presence. By using the tips provided above you should be able to get a good start and ensure that you choose one that best suits you and your business while also appealing to your customers.

Digital Pacific is an Australian provider of web hosting solutions including dedicated servers, domain names and virtual private servers.