Choosing a domain name
14/05/2009
How is it best to choose a domain name?
There are two main parts to a domain name.
- The first part (the name) and this is likely to be your company name or keywords which describe your product or service.
- The last part of the domain name such as .com or .co.uk or .org.uk or .net.
This article considers the factors you should consider when selecting a domain name.
Selecting the first part of your domain name(s)
The heading of this section intentionally includes multiple domain names as many businesses should consider registering multiple domain names.
The first domain name is your company name. Important to prevent someone else using it or purchasing it (know as cyber squatting).
Next you should consider the best domain name for your website. This could be your company name above, but it could describe your product or service. There are huge marketing benefits for having a domain name that consists of your main keywords.
Thirdly you must check your choice of domain name does not “look different” when written down. Domain names of multiple keywords joined together can appear to be a different set of keywords if the letters happen to form different words. For example a toy store based in the village of Uckfield will be ill advised to use the domain name www.toysUckfield.com as when written as www.toysuckfield.com it reads very differently.
See our other article called Silly Domain Names for many more exampkes as above.
Selecting the domain name extension
If you are a big business you should consider buying multiple domains to prevent cyber squatting. But which domain should you use?
If you are a business, then you should consider the .co.uk and .com domain names. The only exceptions are media based industries which might consider the .tv or .net domains. For information the .tv does not stand for TeleVision. It is the official domain name extension allocated to the country of Tuvalu. Tuvalu is a Polynesian island in the Pacific Ocean with a population of about 12,000 and it is the fourth smallest country in the world. Tuvalu has a thriving business selling.tv domain names to English speaking countries!
The choice between .co. and .co.uk for your main website depends on several factors.
A .co.uk domain name is easier to get highly ranked on UK Google so should be the domain name of choice for UK centred businesses.
But for businesses wishing to show a global presence, the .com domain name is preferable as the marketing image of a larger company will outweigh the search engine advantage of a .co.uk domain name.
Organisations who are not businesses should select the .org.uk or .org domain names, and again similar criteria apply as with the .co.uk and .com domain names.
In the UK schools are provided with a .sch.uk domain name, educational establishments a .ac.uk and local authorities can get a .gov.uk domain name. These should be used if possible are they offer search engine marketing advantages. Because there are stringent criteria to acquire thee domain names, they are ranked higher in Google.
Multinational businesses or organisations should consider acquiring multiple domains including the local top level domains in their own country.
