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Before everything, before the fantastic text, the incredible design, whatever scripts you’ve got doing, ah, scripty things, there’s one thing you need to decide.
What’s your domain name?
Your domain name is another way of saying “your website address”. So the domain name of my website is “daniboy.com”.
There are many weapons at your disposal when it comes to marketing your website and having a good name is the first one you should get sorted. It can make the difference between something memorable that gets hotwired into your memory the first time you see it or something full of awful hyphens, numbers, capitalisations and slashes that stands zero chance of ever being entered into a browser correctly.
Here are a few tips on what to do. Some will be obvious; some, I hope, will make you think “okaaaaayyy, riiiiiight, I see what you’ve done there”.
Make sure the name you want isn’t already taken.
An obvious one, but this is your first step. Don’t agonise over THE name for your business only to find it’s already been snapped up. Google the phrase “domain names” and you’ll get lots of companies that will show you whether the name you want is available or not. One other thing: make sure it’s free of legal conflicts with other trademarked names.
If you haven’t started business yet…
…check out what domains you can get and compare them with what you have in mind for your business name. Can’t get the domain name you want? Consider changing your company name to fit the domain you can get.
If you’ve already started business…
…make your domain name the same as your business name where possible, so that you can market them together. You might also want to relate the name to your line of business. I haven’t done that. See why below.
Make it memorable. And short.
My name is Daniel O'Connor. I’m a copywriter. I could have gone for something like “danieloconnorcopywriter.com”, but nah. It’s too long, there are too many letters, meaning too many opportunities to mis-type it, and it’s not memorable. So I went for “daniboy.com” instead. It trips off the tongue sweetly, is easy to remember, short enough, and gives an impression of a good person to deal with. Which I am, of course. Short names, what’s more, fit nicely into logos.
Think about keywords.
If you aren’t that fussed about short names, why not think about getting your top search engine keyword making up part of the name? Search engines LOVE having keywords making up part of the domain name. So you could have “dan-marketing-copywriter.com”, for example, and that’d give Google warm feelings inside.
Tailor your name to the market you want to reach.
Along with some other domain names I use which point to specific “landing pages” (I’ll get onto them another time), I use “daniboy.com”, “daniboy.co.uk” and “englishcopywriter.co.uk”. They all point to the exact same page. Here’s why:
- daniboy.com is the main one for the whole world.
- daniboy.co.uk is just in case people in the UK remember the “daniboy” but not the “.com”.
- englishcopywriter.co.uk is, if you can believe this, about ten times more successful on Japanese search engines (Japan’s one of my biggest markets) than “daniboy.com” or “daniboy.co.uk”. You’ve got to keep an open mind about what’s going to work.
Assume spelling mistakes.
If possible, buy up domain names that you might type were you to misspell your own name, then get them to redirect to your site. As an example, type in “www.starwar.com”… It immediately redirects to “www.starwars.com”. You see what they did there? They anticipated the mistake and prepared for it.
.com? .co.uk? .biz?
Registering a “.com” domain name is more expensive, but ultimately worth it. It all depends on how international or otherwise you consider your business to be. 100% UK-based? Go with “.co.uk”; it’s cheaper and easier to get the domain you want. UK customers might, what’s more, feel better about buying from a website ending in .co.uk, rather than a more American-sounding .com. You want to appeal to the global market? Go with “.com”. Other suffixes, like “.biz”, are becoming more popular, but “.com” is still king.
.com: one more thing.
Browser algorithms. When you write a website name directly into the browser window without the “.com” or “.co.uk” suffix, the browser assumes it’s a “.com” before anything else. Meaning, if your competitor has the same domain name as you, except with a “.com” suffix, while you have the “.co.uk” one, they’ll get all the web traffic from people writing your web name but not bothering to type in the suffix. And that’s not good.
If you’re absolutely sure
…of what you want, even though the domain name is already taken, why not think about contacting the domain holder and seeing if they’ll sell it to you? You can go to “whois.net” to see who holds the domain. Alternatively, if you think the holder is just keeping it in order to sell it but not doing anything with it (hate that) and you know, thanks to “whois.net”, that the domain is up for renewal, why not Google “drop catcher” and try to snatch it up as soon as it becomes available?
Hope this has helped! Good luck with choosing something fantastic.
You’re very welcome to reprint any of the Good Business articles on your website and/or newsletters free of charge, provided:
Daniel O'Connor is a website copywriter, advertising copywriter and marketing copywriter using the name Daniboy. He can be contacted in the UK on +44-1892-518269 or at mail@daniboy.com. Visit http://www.daniboy.com for further details of his services, including bespoke article writing, and more free reprint articles.
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