You should take the same amount of time researching and selecting your website’s domain name as you did when choosing a name for your business. Here are some things to consider as part of your research and to help you make the right decision before you purchase a domain.
Keep it simple – shorter memorable domain names with natural spellings of real words are obviously going to be easier for people to remember than long-winded domains with jargon, compound or made-up words. (eg. what is more memorable www.entrepreneurs-numedia.com or online-business-tips.com ??)
Domain variations – if you are looking to buy a .co.uk domain you should also consider picking up the .com variation. This protects you from other businesses purchasing the .com domain and then piggy-backing on your brand and online marketing efforts. In fact if you do your domain research and the .com domain is no longer available we would advise you think long and hard before purchasing the .co.uk address.
Plan for growth – unless you are targetting a very specific niche you should try to use a domain that reflects the full range of your business services or products and does not restrict the later development of your site due to relevancy issues. (Consider dog-groomers.com versus pet-groomers.com).
Keyword stuffing – using a relevant keyword in your domain can help with your search engine rankings for that specific keyword but before you go wild and overload your URL with keywords you should always balance the seo benefits against memorability and brand reinforcement.
A word of warning – it might be obvious but you might be suprised to learn that we still get the occassional request to set up domains like “Micro5oft.com or Better-than-Tesco.co.uk”. Unless you want to be talking to your lawyers steer clear of domains with trademarks or well known brands.
