USING YOUR OWN NAME AS A DOMAIN NAME

This is a common practice that you can benefit from if you don’t have a very common/well-known name, but it’s not necessarily the best practice. It applies best to short and memorable names, if you have a long, complicated name like “Institute of something something and this and that of here and there” you should probably think of something shorter and simpler.

USING WORD/WORDS RELATED TO YOUR BUSINESS IN A DOMAIN NAME

Using words which reflect your business or brand can assist you by targeting potential audiences of your website. Using keywords can also help you optimize your domain name and allows your potential visitors find you among the crowd. Therefore, it’s better to use more specific keywords to get ahead of the competition. The best-case scenario is if your audience can look at your name and think “oh they probably do this”.

CHOOSE SIMPLE AND EASY TO REMEMBER DOMAIN NAMES, BUT TRY TO MAKE IT BRANDABLE!

Using a simple name can increase your website’s traffic by increasing the number of returning visitors. As mentioned earlier, using “Instituteofsomethingsomethingandthisandthatofhereandthere.com” is definitely not the way to go. If your goal is creating a new brand, try to think of something original that is brandable and without other associations like “Google”, “Microsoft”, “Adobe” etc. But although it’s beneficial, don’t think of it as a necessity. Prioritize simplicity and specific keywords related to your business.

AVOID USING SPECIAL SYMBOLS AND NON-ALPHABETICAL CHARACTERS SUCH AS HYPHENS, NUMBERS ETC WITHIN A DOMAIN NAME

These special symbols and characters can help you to make you domain name unique. However, they can also make it easy to forget or misspell. It is highly recommended to keep the domain name pure alphabetical, it is definitely the best practice, but the internet is a big place and the domain name you want isn’t always available. You might need to throw a hyphen in there somewhere to get a result closest to your desire. In these cases, it can also be a good idea to add a short prefix or suffix. For example, if “trendsetter” isn’t available try “trendsettershop” or “thetrendsetter”.

RESEARCH ABOUT DOMAIN EXTENSIONS BEFORE SELECTING ONE

Finding available domain names with some of the popular and recognizable extensions, called Top-level Domains, such as .com, .co, .net, .org is very difficult. As previously mentioned, the domain name you desire might not be available, which is very likely with popular TLD’s like .com.

You might want to look into the different TLD’s, depending on the purpose of your domain. For example, .org is widely used by non-profit organizations and .net by tech companies, obviously as a result of word association.

But still .com should definitely be on the top of your wishlist. To this day .com is still one of the most popular TLD’s, it’s widespread and the best recognized, which makes it the most accessible TLD, but it’s far from the only one out there, newer extensions are like .xyz are growing in popularity.

If .com is not available for you, you should definitely try to lock down your Country Code Top-level Domain, also called ccTLD, such as .dk for Denmark, .ca for Canada, .fr for France, .it for Italy and many more, almost every country has one. This will still give be very effective in your country, and you can always try to acquire the other domains when your business has achieved some success.