Choosing the right domain names

Help and advice on choosing the right domain names is not always easy to find. Often we here from people who’d like some easy to follow rules-of-thumb that they can use to help them to make the right decisions and choose the right domain name for their website. So we’ve prepared this easy to understand guide to choosing a domain name.

Should I choose my company name as my domain name?

The answer we give to this question is a unequivicable yes. In practically all cases if you’ve not already done so you should registrer the Top Level versions company name. By registering domains in your company name you are protecting your brand, and ensuring that no one else is able to trade off of your good name but that doesn’t mean that the story stops there.

In many cases the company name will not describe the nature of the business. Take ours for example, Arena DM. The DM in our name stands for Design and Media, but by it’s self our company name says nothing about the market sector that we’re in. Only people who already know about us are likely to search for us by name. Often a website’s purpose is to attract new customers, and so in our case people are more likely to bea searching for terms such as “Web design”, “website designers” or “web design in Milton Keynes”.

For this traffic there is some weight to the argument that a good domain name should also relate to the nature of the business. While including relevant keywords in a domain name is unlikely to be the make or break factor of your SEO strategy, historically we have found it does appear to help and so when possible we advise clients to try to include a primary keyword in their domain name as long as it doesn’t make the name itself too much of a mouthful.

What’s the maximum lenght of a domain name?

Ideally a domain name should be short and catchy. The longer the domain name, the less likely people are to what to type it in, and the more likely they are to make a mistake while doing so.  The same goes for the use of hyphens in domain names. Technically it makes no difference at all but from a practical perspective people forget to insert them.  This can be bad news because one of the most common reasons people choose to use hyphens in a domain name, is because the name they actually wanted was already registered. So it is possible that by doing so, you may end up handing your compettitors a free lunch. Keep your domain names short and where possible avoid hyphenated names.

Which type of domain should I choose.

If you’re building a commercial site you should stick to a TLD or Top Level Domain. So simply speaking that means you should stick to .CO.UK , .COM or the more recent UK TLD the .UK.COM

The budget option here is the .CO.UK with the tried and tested .COM best described as the “Safe Bet”. .CO.UK’s are available for just a few pounds .COM’s tend to be about £20. With domains, you get what you pay for. Recently the introduction of the relatively expensive .UK.COM domain (circa £35 per year) has devided professional opinion among webmasters. Technically there should be no difference between the three they are all acceptable TLD’s for the UK market, but ask an SEO professional and you might get a different answer.

SEO is about raising a site’s ranking with the search engines relative to competing sites. Another way to look at this is that SEO is about displacing site’s that currently rank higher. No search engine will make public the exact methods that they use to compile their listings but in our experience it’s becoming increasingly difficult to displace a well written .UK.COM domain with a .CO.UK or .COM domain. So our advice is that if you can afford it you should push the boat out and secure that .UK.COM domain name while you still can.

When choosing a domain name it’s common practice for website managers and business owners to select the name of the company, but this is not always the best strategy.  In some cases this will work well, if the business is well known in the market and respected then using the company name may well be a good choice, what about start up companies?  In these instances

There is much more you could consider but if we tried to tell you everything you’d be reading all day. If you need help to chose the right domain name why not get in touch and we’ll be happy to talk you through the available options.

Useful resources:
Google keywords tools