Choosing the right, memorable domain name can make the difference between a business that’s successful and one that fails.

Table of contents

The ideal domain name
New or second-hand
What not to buy
A .com or .co.uk or both?
International character sets
Helping your search listing
Share your experience
Useful resources

There are probably very few people who would disagree that in order to succeed in modern business you need a web site. However what few people realise is a good web site can be enhanced by a good domain name, and your chances of getting higher up the search engine listings are also dependent on your choice of domain name.

The ideal domain name

The ideal domain name is a name that’s short, memorable and either describes what the site does or uses the brand name as the domain. While you could do this easily in 1995 when there were just 40 million users worldwide and around 18,957 websites, it’s a lot different now when there are according to Netcraft close to 300 million individual web domains registered worldwide.

The Holy Grail of domain names is a one, two or three letter domain name eg www.ba.com or www.tcp.com – but until recently one, two, or three-letter domain names have been off the market. However, recently the UK domain authority Nominet has decided to release a certain amount of short domain names, unfortunately you have to be either very rich or have a brand that is associated with two letters, like British Airways ba.com to have any chance of succeeding in buying one.

If you don’t have money to burn, you can with a bit of ingenuity still find a name that fits the three essential criteria; memorable, on-brand and short.

New or second-hand

There are two ways to get a good domain name either you buy a “new” one from a domain name company or from your web hosting company, or you get one from a business like Sedo who auctions off web domains.

Domain names over the last ten years have become a web currency, with domain names frequently selling for four and five figure sums, and there are many businesses who make their profits purely from speculating on the domain market.

With almost 300 million websites worldwide each with a unique domain name the number of choices you have for a new domain name are limited, however the advantage is it won’t cost you more than a few tens of pounds to register, and you can start using it immediately. Whereas with a domain name from a company like Sedo, your domain name will be memorable and may already have traffic to the domain and a search engine history, but you may have to pay a few hundred pounds, or up to tens of thousands of pounds, and you may need to wait a week or so for the auction to finish.

If you are a start-up business then you’re going to have a better chance of getting a “new” domain as you’ll almost be able to choose your company to suit the domain.

When you’re choosing your domain name think about the domain names that are memorable, and what you want to achieve in the future. The domain www.londoncabs.com may be free now but if you’re thinking of expanding to other cities then you should also check the availability of www.leedscabs.com, www.yorkcabs.com etc Choosing something descriptive like quickcabs or speedycabs maybe a much better idea if you want to be national, however if you don’t plan on getting big then using the location can be useful.

Nora Nanayakkara, Business Development Director at Sedo UK recommends that businesses “should look at multiple keyword domains while pencils.com is a good name, colouringpencils.com is more descriptive and will give better results.”

What not to buy

There are only a few don’ts to buying domain names.

Don’t

• Use hyphens, they may improve your choices but they’re easy to miss out. For example morriscabs is better than morris-cabs.
• Replace characters with numbers unless you’re going for the youth market eg l4ds.com instead lads.com
• Use trademarks and brands you don’t own – The law is unclear on using trademarks in domain names. The most recent court case in July 2010 in the US came to no hard, or fast solution, so it’s best to avoid using them.
• Confuse with strange and unusual spellings – kwikcabs instead Quickcabs might be available but it’s liable to be confusing.

A .com or .co.uk or both?

Choosing a domain name is also complicated by the choice of tens of different domain name types. Do you choose a .com, a .co.uk, a .net, .it etc. There are hundreds of different options, every country around the world has its own domain name suffix, additionally there are further domain options that describe the type of business such as, .biz for businesses, .coop for co-operatives, or .travel for travel businesses.

The .com domain is over-subscribed, which is why many businesses choose for alternatives like .net or .mobi. However the .com domain has a cachet with the public. It’s something they recognise likewise a .co.uk domain is recognised as a UK domain name and by opting for an unfamiliar name you will need to do some extra work. Users tend to guess domain names so if you’re cottageholidays.net and there’s already a cottageholidays.com and .co.uk, then the chances are you will lose some of your traffic to them.

International character sets

However Nanayakkara, flags up that there are some domain choices that could be useful if you’re thinking about foreign markets. “There’s a growing Russian and Chinese market on the internet and so using Russian, Arabic, or Chinese characters in your web address through the new Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) could be a powerful draw.”

Ideally a UK business should have a .co.uk and a .com address, and if you’re thinking about other countries in Europe, then a .eu might be a more cost effective purchase than buying all of the individual country domains. However in the long run a .fr, de .it are always the domains preferred by users in France, Germany and Italy.

Helping your search listing

Another element in your search for the ultimate domain name is to look at what people are searching for. A good domain name can help your search engine listings if it includes words and phrases that businesses are looking for.

Do not assume your brand name is the best domain name to select, customers may know your name in the local area and associate it with a product or service, but your name is unlikely to be known on the internet. In terms of keyword searches a domain cartersspecialitybutschers.co.uk will get better results than carters.co.uk or cartersbutchers.co.uk.

Share your experience

What’s your domain name? Does it describe your business? Has your domain name helped your business? Let us know.

Useful Resources

Namecheck.com - The Namecheck search engine helps businesses to rapidly search for available trademarks, domain names, and even social media usernames in one location.

Nominet – Nominet is the UK governing body for .uk domain names. It’s a not-for-profit business it is the place to go if you think anyone is misusing your brand name in a .uk domain name.