A domain name is very essential in online business or blogging. It truly represents your brand, business, and the purpose of that online presence. Finding the perfect domain name is a difficult job. You have to think many times before finalizing a domain name.
A domain name is an address or URL to any website which we use to access that specific website in the browsers. We can call it the address of that website.
Like the real physical address of any house or business, a domain name is an address on the internet to that business. For example domain name of this blog is www.99Points.info
Usually, a domain name costs around $14/per year. Some domain registrar such as Bluehost and Godaddy offers free domain on signup for the first year.
Here are a few important points to keep in mind while selecting a suitable and perfect domain name for your blog or business.
1. Focus on the Brand or Keywords
Your brand and business name should be the first choice for your domain as well. If you have a real bookstore and it has the name JohnBookStore, then for the website of the same bookstore you should use the same name as the domain. i-e johbookstore.com or johnbookstore.net etc.
But not always is the business name considered suitable. If it is a simple online blog about any specific niche (category) then we should focus on keywords related to that niche.
Let’s say a design blog shares posts about web designing or an affiliate marketing shares news about money-making strategies than its best to choose domain names that include keywords like design, money, marketing, web design, etc. But if you want to use a brand name, then make sure it should not be a trademark of any other company.
2- Easy to Remember & Pronounce
The domain name should be very easy to remember and pronounce. Do not use wrong or short spells for a word. For example, using dezineblog.com instead of designblog.com or using pplbookstore.com instead of the people book store.
3- Make it Short
The maximum number of characters in a domain should not exceed 10-15 or if it is long then it should be easy enough to remember people. Short names are easy to remember and typed by users and more likely fewer chances are to mistype.
4- Avoid Hyphens and Numbers
Make sure your domain name does not have any hyphens or numbers in it. Using hyphens will be difficult to say and if a user forgets hyphens in the domain then he will reach a different website without noticing anything.
5- Use proper extension
Domain name extension or TLD (Top Level Domain) is very important. Most people like .com domain name extensions, but It should not be the same case always since sometimes a good domain name is not available with .com In this case rather skipping the good domain name, we can check with different extensions.
There are plenty of different extensions available such as:
– .net
– .org
– .co
– .club
And moreover, there are new TLDs are in the market, and you can see what extension is suitable for a specific industry you are in.
– .design
– .graphics
– .media
– .art
– .services
– .network
– .consulting
– .solutions
– .agency
Picking the extension depends on the business or blog audience as well. If the audience is not very technical and does not know the different extensions then they might type the web address wrong because most internet users think there is only .com for all the domains. So you have to think about this point as well. The audience of a web design or development blog will more likely remember the extension difference of the blog they are visiting.
Tools to Generate Domain Name Ideas
As you have read all the basic and important points that we keep in focus on while choosing a domain name, below are a few tools that will give us some ideas about the domain.
Panabee
Panabee is an online free tool that is very simple to use and gives you suggestions and ideas about domain names. It works by generating different name ideas around the keyword you enter. The names are derived from phonemes, syllables, abbreviations, suffixes, prefixes, and popular domain trends.
Shopify Business name generator
Shopify Business name generator is another free and awesome tool that helps you in choosing a business name. It’s good to get creative, as long as you clearly communicate what your company offers.
Instant Domain Name Checker
The Instant Domain Search tool lets you check the available domain names instantly. I used this tool many times and perfect for finding if a domain name is available or has already been picked.
Conclusion
I hope this post has helped you in understanding of domain name selection process, Now the next step should be buying a domain name and hosting account for your business. We highly recommend using Bluehost hosting service with a free domain. For more information, you can read how to choose best hosting service.
Please share this post with your friends and comment below to let me know what is the name of your domain and how did you get the idea about that :)
