Choosing the ultimate domain name for your business can become a tedious and time consuming task, but it doesn't have to be. Herewith, a few simple guidelines to ensure your domain name properly represents everything your business stands for, enough information for people to know what your site is about, however not giving away too much of the good stuff before they have a chance to visit your site, and all the while creating a memorable and simple name that your customers will never forget! Gateway offers a range of different domain extensions for you to choose from.
1) Keep your name choice as simple as possible. Simplicity is the key because your customers will remember it, relay it and never miss-spell it. Go for short, catchy names like cars.com instead of a longer, more unnecessarily informative name like carsales.com.
2) Avoid using purposely misspelt words to draw attention to your sites, such as dogs to dogz, cars to carz for example, as people are highly likely to spell these incorrectly and ultimately never reach your site.
3) Stick to using letters only, as dashes, symbols and numbers these are often difficult to remember and are occasionally misplaced in when typing in a domain name, resulting in error pages and reduced SEO.
4) Before purchasing your domain name, research brands similar to yours so that your domain names don't end up being similar or contain the same keywords. You don't want to end up losing customers to your competitors because they assume you're the same company.
5) Avoid key words such as best, cheap and top etc in your domain name as instead of attracting visitors to your sites, they display your brand as just that - cheap, instead of giving your site a good name. Keep these for blog tags and key words in articles to still make use of their SEO, but not have that as your brands' full identity.
6) Try out tailored extensions that match your brand, such as .wine ($40.00) or .coffee ($25.00) or .bike ($25.00). These extensions heighten your SEO with you having to alter your company name so you can keep your brand name in tack and still have a catchy domain name like Jasons Bike Shop could become jasons.bike or The Red Grape Winery could be redgrape.wine. This explains exactly what your brand does without cutting down on your full company name. Our Gateway Portal has a wide variety of tailored extensions to choose from.
7) Always read over your domain name before completing the final purchase and have someone else check through it for you too to avoid awkward and inappropriate mishaps that often come from merging company names together, such as americanscrapmetal.com that is meant to read 'American Scrap Metal' and therapistinabox.com meant to read 'Therapist In A Box'
8) Make use of your countries' Country Code Domain (ccTLD). Benefits include heightened geographic SEO, creativity allowance and focused domain use. For a more extensive list of benefits, visit our blog post on this topic! Gateway has a range of ccTLDs available, including .co.za, org.za, web.za and net.za as well as others including. co, .je, .gg just to name a few.
9) Use the same domain name extension for all of your websites, social media profiles and staff email addresses. By doing this, your customers will easily be able to contact your business if need be and can easily spot your social media profiles amongst other similar brands.
By using the shortest possible arrangement of letters to relay information you need in order for your business to boom in the online world today, register a name that defines your businesses purpose, location and name combined - you can always expand on each of these later on your website and social media profiles. Your domain name defines your business from the get-go, so ensure you take the time to come up with a memorable one, without breaking the bank to do it!
Browse our Price List on Gateway for a full list of the domain name extensions we have to offer and get in contact with our support team on support@dns.business if you need any assistance throughout the registration process.
Posted by Kilana Chohan
