Choosing a Domain Name for Your Business Website

Your website’s domain name is your business’ identity online. Domain name can make or break your business online – it can considerably impact your website’s traffic and brand recall online.

However, picking the right domain name is a daunting task, because there are hundreds of millions of websites on the World Wide Web. According to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief published by Verisign, the base of registered domain names has increased by 5 million in the first quarter of 2014, bringing the total to 276 million domain names registered worldwide. Creating a domain name that stands out from the crowd, the one that is search engine friendly while protecting your brand is not an easy job.

To help you out, we have come up with a list of factors that you need to keep in mind when choosing a domain name for your business website. Hope this helps!

Choose a unique domain name closer to your business nameSee to it that the domain name is closer to the actual name of your business. Your audience are more likely to remember your brand/business and thus branded domains help in word of mouth marketing.

According to Nielsen’s ‘Trust In Advertising’ report 2013, branded websites are the second most trusted form of advertising. Also, branded domains earn credibility. For example, Infinitywebmonitor.com looks more credible than cheapwebmonitoringservices.com.

One more important thing you need to remember here is not to take shortcuts to get traffic by creating a domain name that is close to your competitor or a popular site – it can be disastrous. Don’t make a mistake of picking up an already established website and doing minor alterations – making it plural, adding hyphens or misspelling it.

Keep it as short and meaningful as possibleIf you choose a domain name that is long and complex, your customers are likely to mistype it or misspell it. A good rule of thumb is to make sure your domain name is short, simple; easy to remember, type and pronounce. More importantly, it should be relevant to what you do and to your core business. The shorter and meaningful your domain name is, the easier it will be for your prospective customers to type it and remember it.

Choose extensions carefullyTop level domains (TLDs), the last segment of the domain name, are the most valuable extensions when choosing a domain name. There are a number of domain name extensions (.com, .net, .org, .ca, .edu, .gov, .info, .biz) to choose from, but you have to be careful while choosing one. Choose extensions depending upon the nature of your business and your audience.

.com is one of the popular and common extensions used generally by commercial websites. Here are the other extensions and some important notes on how they are used..co : generally used for company and commerce.org : non-profits and non-commercial organizations.net : .net is used for technical, IT sites.info : for informational sites.biz : business or commercial site

If you are serving a specific country, it is better to go for a country-specific domain such as ‘.ca’ for Canada. You will have better chances of ranking in search engines. For example, websites with .ca rank better in google.ca or bing.ca.

Internet users generally support businesses operating from their country. For example, a research by Canadian Internet Registration authority (CIRA) shows that .ca makes a good choice for businesses that wish to have an online presence as more than 70 per cent of online Canadians say that they prefer to support Canadian businesses, whenever possible.

Domain privacyDomain privacy is a useful feature. Many people would not like to share their identity data publicly. For such people, domain privacy feature is a boon. You can avail this feature from your domain registrar.

Under domain privacy, the webhost will make sure that the client's identity data such address, etc. are not revealed.

How it worksWhen you use this feature, your "whois" domain information is replaced with the domain privacy message of the registrar and is set such that your identity data are not accessible to others on the Web.

Picking the right domain name for your business is the first step towards building a successful online campaign. Therefore, make the right choice and choose the right domain name for your business.

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