How to Pick a Domain Name For Your Website

When you’re ready to launch your first website, you’ve got to get a domain name. While there isn’t anything inherently hard about choosing the domain name for your website, it is extremely important and worth taking a few minutes to make sure you do well.

After all, your domain name is going to be your online identity, and a bad domain name can hurt your business before you ever get started.

Top Level Domain Considerations

There are plenty of options when it comes to finding a domain extension - i.e .com .net .org .tv .me etc.   These extensions are called “Top Level Domains.” However, when you’re ready to pick your domain, always get the .com. If you can’t get the .com extension, keep looking for a domain name you like. I know many people who buy .biz or .net domain names and then find that when they tell people about their website end up sending visitors to their competitors because they go to the .com instead.

People always assume .com. Period. If you’re a nonprofit organization and you want the .org domain, that’s fine, but try to get the .com anyway.   Maybe you’re going to be doing video and want a .tv extension… same thing - get the .com as well. 

You can tell them and even remind them that your domain isn’t a .com but people will type it in as a .com anyway so why try to change peoples’ habits?

How Does It Sound?

Here’s another way to evaluate your potential domain name. Say it out loud. And then ask other people to say it out loud. Is it easy to say or is it a tongue twister. Some domains may look good on paper but when you try to say them, you find that people would have an easier time saying Peter Piper Picked A Peck Of Pickled Peppers.  

That’s not a good thing. 

Make that it’s easy to say, and speaking of easy…

Can You Spell It?

The bottom line is that people are terrible spellers. Don’t pick any words that are difficult to spell. If a third grader can spell it, you’re probably in good shape. If not, then you may want to find something a little easier. If you’re going to insist on having words in your domain name that people are going to misspell then make sure you purchase the misspellings of the domain name as well and point them to the correct domain.

Keyword in Domain

Whatever your primary keyword domain is, then make sure that word appears in the domain name. Let me give you an example. If your website is going to be about dogs, then you would want to make sure “dog” or “dogs” is in the domain name.   DogTrainingSecrets would be a good choice whereas PetsAndMore wouldn’t be so good. Try to get your primary keyword in your domain name. Trust me on this one.