What Is A Domain Name?
Your domain name is your website address. It’s the address people type
into their web browsers. Metaphorically speaking, if your website is your
house, then your domain name is your house address
For example, Google.com is a domain name. So are WordPress.org and
WordPress.com.
Your domain name is your website address. It’s the address people type
into their web browsers. Metaphorically speaking, if your website is your
house, then your domain name is your house address.
For example, Google.com is a domain name. So are WordPress.org and
WordPress.com.
There are two parts to a domain name. The first part is the name itself
(Google) and the second part is the domain extension (.com).
For the name, it can be a combination of alphanumeric characters. This
means that you’re not limited to using only letters for your domain name.
if you want, you can use all numbers like 1234.com, or a combination of
numbers and letters like abcd1234.com.
For the domain extension, you can choose from 280 extensions. There are
generic top-level domain names like .com, .net, and .org. And then there
are country code top-level domains like .us, .au. uk, .de
Top 5 Tips To Choose The Perfect Domain Name For Your Website
There are a few things you need to keep in mind before you go ahead and
buy your domain name. Take a look at this checklist to see if the domain
name you have in mind fits the bill:
1. Make it short
The shorter your domain name, the better it is for your brand. Of course, all
the two-letter and three-letter domain names fall into premium territory and
can cost thousands or even millions of dollars!
Don’t go for domain names that are 30 or more characters long. That’s just
really too long. For instance, if you want to look up a website and its
domain name is ‘thiswebsiteaddressisreallylong.com’ you’d probably stop
typing halfway and just abandon the site
Also, the chances of misspelling or mistyping a long domain name is high,
so you definitely want to keep it short.
2. Make it easy to remember
Brandable domain names are more memorable than randomly spelled
ones. An example of a brandable domain name would be the
‘dollarshaveclub.com.’ It’s a popular website with a good-sized following.
I’m sure that the memorable domain name helped with their branding
efforts too.
If you’re planning to build a personal or portfolio website, you can use your
own name as your domain name. If your legal name is long and hard to
spell, maybe you can try using your nickname instead.
If you already have an existing business, for example, a restaurant, then
you should definitely use your restaurant’s name as your domain name.
However, if someone’s already using your preferred domain, try adding
something another word to your domain name.
For instance, instead of restaurant.com, you can use something like
bestveganrestaurant.com or restaurantincity.com.
3. Try to avoid hyphens and numbers as much as possible
When you’re giving out your website address to people over the telephone,
and it’s got a hyphen or number on it, it’s going to be confusing for the
other person on the line.
For example, if your domain name is best-restaurant-in-90210.com, people
will probably misunderstand you, and you’d have to keep repeating the
address.
Your conversation could go something like this:
“Is that the number 9 or the word nine?”
“What do you mean by hyphen? Do you mean dash?"
If you kept your website address simple like bestrestaurantincity.com, you’d
have to repeat yourself less often
4. Make sure your domain name isn’t trademarked or copyrighted
Getting into legal trouble is a very real possibility if you don’t research your
domain name before you buy it. If you end up buying a domain name that is
trademarked or copyrighted, you could get into a hot mess
Before you buy your domain, it’s a good idea to use an online tool like
Trademarkia (https://www.trademarkia.com) to search for trademarks.
5. Use the right domain name extension
With hundreds of domain name extensions to choose from, which one is
the right one for your business? For starters, .com is usually the first thing
people search for. When the .com is taken up, people usually go for the
.net and then .org, and so on
But why are .com’s so popular? Well, it’s been around for many, many
years. When people tell you their web address for the first time, you
normally expect to type in .com on your web browser.
For instance, if people tell you their website is ‘myawesomewebsite.net’,
you would probably type in ‘myawesomewebsite.com’ before you realize
it’s the wrong website! So you’d have to go back and edit the domain name
and type in .net instead of .com.
