How to choose domain names and setting up a business online
If you are looking to start a small business online, or already run a small business and would like to utilize the power of online marketing to enhance your business, there are some important factors you will need to consider.
This short guide will help walk you through many of the core elements needed to choose an ideal domain name for your company and online business. Think of this as a checklist to refer to as you implement your plan.
Step 1 – Keyword Research
You already know what your company is, or what it will be. Now you need to decide what specific phrases, or words, you want to rank for in the search engines. If your business sells domain names, do you want your website to appear when a potential customer enters: domain name, cheap domain names, domain name generator, Suggested domain names etc into a search engine? Decide on the relevant keywords for your business.
Step 2 – Choosing a Domain Name
This is the web address, or URL (Uniform Resource Locator), for your website i.e. google.com. Here you may have to choose between establishing a recognized brand name or best practice for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Depending on your personal preference, you have two options available.
Brand Recognition – If you are looking to build your business name into an established, recognizable brand you may want to choose this option. For example, if your small business is named “Smith Golf Shoes”, the URL “smithgolfshoes.com” may be just what you are looking for.
SEO Performance-Based – This option will give you the best chance of ranking in a search engine for your primary keyword(s) i.e. cheap golf shoes. It is a proven fact that search engines place importance on the keywords located in a website URL. If brand is not relevant to you, look to select a domain name that includes your primary keyword.
You should always look to choose a .com domain name; this extension is the most widely recognized and trusted. If your budget allows it, you should also secure the other extensions such as: .org, .net and .info. This ensures that no competitor can snap these up and piggyback off your success.
Sometimes the domain you want will not be available. In this case, try to think outside the box and consider adding hyphens (global-domain.com), or using misspellings (globaldomian.com) or even numbers (global4domain.com). Our Domain Generator and Domain Suggestions tool helps you find many variations of a given phrase. If your budget allows, snapping up misspellings of your domain name will also stop rivals grabbing them. Remember that your domain name is how people will find you, you should be looking to protect it any way that you can.