Figuring out a domain name for your business website sounds not only like a creative but quite a responsible job. When you think about that at first you imagine a name which will sum together imagination, practicality, precision, competitiveness and simplicity! That  is challenging and in the same time you never know about the objective motives which will let your  auditoria  search for, like and remember your website with the label you picked for it. Here are some guiding tips to  make you more confident when taking that important decision.

Register a Domain even if you have not even started translating  your business online

Even if you are just starting to translate your business online, you are about to settle a blog only or you are planning for a website as an additional marketing or media channel – the step to start with is “register adomain”. Building a website based on a strategy, finding a reliable hosting etc will take time, not to talk about website development which is a part of the online throughout existence. So don’t wait for all of that to be finished before getting “your” domain. Online time is more dynamic – tomorrow, after a week or a month you might find the name you liked times more expensive or gone right under your nose and your brilliant idea stolen

….and, hey you just got your virtual business label – reserved – what bigger inspiration then that

Make it explicit and attracting and mind the after “.” acronym

...sounds as a standard advice, doesn’t it?

In online environment, however, this advice has its particular reasons and parameters. Why it should be that understandable and that catchy – after all it is going to be an exact address which people should remember and find you at? – exactly – it should be easy to remember and associative with your business. For that purpose – make it short and neat – and easy to spell. You can use abbreviations – but only if completely sure that your target audience knows the meaning of that abbreviation, and it does not have a more online-searchable antonym meaning.

Regarding the domain extension – it is always advisable to go for the popular ones  - the so called TLDs (Top Level Domains) such as .COM, BIZ, .NET. Lately there grew another one which  appears to be really suitable for net addresses of companies and corporation – the .CO. The extension is important to be observed so that to avoid its pronunciation or spelling mismatch with the name, more over - picked with imagination - it can really add euphony or sense to the whole – take for example “ooyes.net” 

When trying to make the right choice of an extension another good advice is to have in mind the geographical area of your target audience. If your company is offering products or services specifically to the Bulgarianpublic for example its good to pick an extension from the so called ccTLDs ( country-code Top Level Domains). Such are .bg – for Bulgaria, .fr – for France, .eu – for Europe etc. This is quite important not only as meant to show where your company is based but also as a significant factor for the local search ranking. Picking a ccTLD as your domain name extension when your clients are geographically defined will actually differentiate you from the global world wide competition of your business and will let you effortlessly cover the geographical area of your prospects with complete accuracy.

Start  SEO  with  your  domain  name

Try to have relevant keywords in your domain. It is a not-to-pass-by advice, even if SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is not your key promotional strategy. Why? – Because your main keywords are actually your business describing tags, they are your labels and they are to define the nature of your business association.

As such – included in your domain name - they will not only add relevance to it  in your customers’ eyes, but will help a lot to your website page ranking. When the search query is included in a domain name, search engines automatically make it bold. A good example of a competitive online business where SEO does play a huge role for being found on the net and where keywords in domain name will support that significantly is: theyachtsforsale.com.

The same advice however won’t be that helpful if taken pedanticly. Do not forget that a domain name should be short and easy to spell. If created solely from  keywords – it  might look spammy to customers and  will not be easy to remember.

Create an alias domain name pointing to the same website

To create an alias domain name, pointing to the same website is easy. All you need is a different extension – from the TDLS or the ccTDLs. For example if you have theyachtsforsale.com, you can register theyachtsforsale.net too, pointing to the same content. Why should you do that? The reasons are more then one. Thus you can minimize the risk of being confused with someone else and you are reserving the name with different extensions for future competitive cases.

Besides, the twin domain might point to a specific part of your website. If having a blog or a forum along with the website you can address them with the additional twin domain: instead of for example http://ooyes.net/articles . This first - will be more secure for the main account – you will have your blog hosted separately -not as a subfolder of the main domain; and second - you will have another domain for cross-linking and SEO.

Mistypes and misspelling can steal your traffic – block that

Though your domain name - neat and easy to remember and spell – time in the net is flying, people are in a hurry. The so called "typos" are a really common mistake – that common that to confidently type that I am relying on my Word English spell check to correct me. So Internet users are fast and spontaneous – even trying to write your exact address – the possibility of mistyping  is huge. What happens then? People are getting “not found” error message.

And what will happen if you find out what the most common misprinted alternative names of your domain name are and also register them and redirect them to the correct one? That’s how you will make sure that all YOUR customers hit the right site – yours. Imagine they did not find you because of their misprinting mistake and they gave up convinced there was no such a website, or worse - your competitors registered some of your misprinted domain names. That will not happen – because if taking your efforts seriously you will be the one to prevent all of that.

There is nothing left but to wish you happy launching of your new website project hoping those advices have made you a little more confident when thinking about your new domain name registration.