How to choose a good domain name
Domain names, CatchTiger.com is full of them! But what should you consider when buying a domain name? We will answer all your questions in this blog.
A domain name is the perfect showcase for your company, product or brand, as it is the first thing people see when they search for your website. Companies or individuals can register a domain name for several reasons:
To build a professional website
To build a personal website
To have a personalized email address
To generate parking revenue
To sell it in (invest)
Before I tell you what exactly a good domain name is, let’s first take a step back and see how you can claim your own domain name. This can be done in two ways: buying or leasing.
BUY A DOMAIN NAME
You can buy a new domain name for about €15 a year, depending on the TLD (Top-Level-Domain, this is the combination of letters after the period). You don’t actually ‘buy’ this domain name, you ‘rent’ it. Purchase a license to use a specific domain name, according to the rules set by a registrar. SIDN is the official registry for .nl websites, DNS Belgium is the registrar for .be websites and Verisign is one of the registrars for .com websites. As long as you pay your monthly or annual fees, you can use the domain name for as long as you want.
LEASING A DOMAIN NAME
If you want to lease a domain name, you are actually using one that belongs to someone else, which could be why this only happens in very rare cases. One of the reasons one would rent a domain name is if he doesn’t have the funds to buy it right away. In this case, the domain name will be paid in terms.
FIRST IMPRESSION
Giving a good first impression is essential, since that impression is what people will remember about you. When it comes to a website, your domain name makes the first impression, so it’s important that you get it right. Having a matching domain name and email address also increases your reliability. An example: your company is called London Real Estate and your domain name is called realestateinlondon.com. Your business name does not match your domain name and will confuse your customers. They will probably look for a website like londonrealestate.com, which is not your company’s website. When choosing a domain name, make sure it also matches your company name.
As we already said, it is better if your email address also matches the domain name. An email address like ‘[email protected]’ looks more professional than ‘[email protected]’.
When you choose your domain name, you should consider the TLD you choose, as it conveys a certain message to your customers. If you own a Dutch business, you’ll probably go with a .nl domain name. If this particular domain name is already in use, you can choose a .com domain name, which will immediately give your website a more international look.
You control people’s first digital impression of you, so consider that carefully.
THE IMPORTANCE OF A GOOD DOMAIN NAME
Like our economy, domain names are influenced by supply and demand. The more popular a domain name is, the more expensive it will be.
Between 1995 and 2000, premium domain names such as website.com, realestate.com, and auction.com could still be registered. Many investors would kill for a time machine, to be able to travel back in time and register these domain names, as they are now worth a lot of money. Only a limited number of these so-called ‘premium’ domain names are available. The more domain names registered, the fewer names will be available.
A domain name like realstate.com will have many ‘organic’ visitors per day. Apart from these visitors, the domain name will look very reliable and trustworthy. Websites like ups.com, shell.com, and mcdonalds.com all have the exact same domain names as their respective companies and will also be considered very trustworthy.
When you go to the supermarket to buy laundry detergent, you probably choose the one you’ve seen advertised on TV, because you feel like you already know it. This is pretty much the same when it comes to domain names, so you get the idea: a domain name is important for its trustworthiness.
HOW DO I CHOOSE A GOOD DOMAIN NAME?
Choosing a good domain name depends on your goal. Are you choosing a domain name for your (new) business or do you want to invest in a domain name? In this article we will explain how to choose a good domain name for your company:
Do you mainly operate in one country? Choose the TLD of the country in which you operate (ccTLD), such as .nl for the Netherlands, .be for Belgium, or .UK for the United Kingdom. Are you an international company or are you looking to internationalize? Then it will be better to choose a general TLD (gTLD) like .com, .eu or .net.
Consider the shape of your domain name. You can buy the domain name flower.com, but you can also opt for the plural version flowers.com. In this particular example, the name flower.com would be a better fit for a brand and flowers.com would be a better fit for a flower shop. In addition to choosing a singular or plural word, the tense of a verb can also be important. In theory, the run.com domain name would be more valuable than ran.com. However, the value still depends on the purpose of your domain name.
Your domain name should also be easy to spell. A good method to test this is the so-called radio test. Imagine hearing a radio ad for the domain name shoezzz.com. Clients will probably wonder if it is written with ‘oe’ or ‘oo’ and how many z’s it is written with. Not all domain names that fail this test will necessarily be bad. Just look at Netflix.com and Flickr.com.
Try to keep your domain name as short as possible – the more words it contains, the less valuable it will be. A domain name called Drivinglessons.com will be more valuable than doyouwanttolearnhowtodrive.com. One called Google.com will be more valuable than typing your question and this search engine will answer it for you.com.
If you choose to use multiple words, make sure they are written in the correct word order. This sounds like a logical thing to do, but it still goes wrong sometimes. A domain name called cheaptickets.com will be much clearer than ticketscheap.com. This is also the case for the so-called new TLDs: coffee.company instead of company.coffee.
Try to avoid using a hyphen (-) in your domain name. These cannot be heard on the radio and make your website less valuable. Customers often forget to use a script, which will cost you valuable traffic.
Try to avoid ‘tricks’. These are domain names such as barbecue.es and swimsu.it. They are difficult to understand and surely need additional clarification, which takes up valuable time, especially when it comes to advertising.
All of the above tips and tricks can be used when choosing a good domain name for your business. If you want to buy a domain name as an investment, there are a few additional things to pay attention to. We will come back to this in another blog.
Still have some questions after reading this blog? Please send us a message and we will answer them for you.