10 Tips For Getting Your Business Domain Right

In today’s connected world, having a website for your business can be more important than having a business card. Your website can even be critical enough to be the difference between business success and failure. The very first step in owning a website is getting the right domain name. Most people do not think much of it, but spending a little time on getting the right business domain name can give you a head start. Here are a ten tips to help you select the right business domain name:

1) Get all TLDs: If you just book a dot com, your competitors may book a .org or .net extension of your domain name and this can hurt you in the long run. To avoid this, register all the domain extensions or TLDs for your domain name, like .net, .org, your country extensions and so on.

2) Domain Parking: Whether you register multiple domain names or different extensions for your domain name, you will be using only one for your website. Ideally, park the rest of the domain names with the same domain registrar. This will simplify administration of the domain names and you will be able to renew all of them together when it is time for domain renewal.

3) Try to go exclusive: If only one of the domain extensions is available for your preferred domain name, it means someone else has registered the others. In other words, you are not the only one with that name on the web. This can cause identity confusion. Try and get a domain name for which all or most domain extensions are available…and register them all. This way, you can ensure that only you have a website with your domain name.

4) Don’t focus too narrow: Do not get a domain name that defines your business focus too narrowly. Make sure your domain name is generic enough to allow for business diversification and expansion.

5) Think small: A small name is easier to remember. It is also usually easier to spell. Try and get as small a domain name as meaningfully possible.

6) Hyphens: As far as possible, avoid using hyphens in the domain name. It isn’t easy to remember for your target audience. However, if your preferred domain name is so important that you do not want to consider an alternative name, a hyphenated domain name can be considered. Even then, avoid domain names with more than one hyphen.

7) Keyword in the domain name: If you can include a keyword in your domain name, it is certainly useful in the long term sense. However, just because it has a keyword in it, your website will not automatically start ranking in search results. You need SEO for that.

8) Things you cannot use: Only letters, numbers and dashes are allowed in domain names. You cannot use spaces and special characters. Your domain name is not case sensitive so do not worry about capitalization.

9) Avoid trademarks: Even if you represent a brand or are a partner of a big brand, try avoiding using the established brand name in your domain name.

10) Contact info: Make sure that your contact information is always up to date. Do not rely on your domain registrar to remind you at the time of domain renewal. As the owner of the site, the onus of ensuring correct contact information is on you.

If you do it right and you can give yourself a head start by getting the right business domain name. If you need any further assistance, we at Ballistic Domains would be only to happy to help you find the right business domain.