The online identity of your business is tied into your website address. It is the strongest marketing tool available for online business, and even a single word can change whether a potential customer wants to visit or not.
Choosing a simple and memorable name for your website is vital to maximising organic marketing. Here’s how to choose, buy, and register a domain name.
Choosing A Name
A host name is made of two parts: the body and the domain zone. The simplest solution is to use the brand name for the domain; it’s much easier for customers to remember and to be found by a search engine. Choose a domain that’s easy to type. Using slang or strange spellings will make it harder for potential customers to find your website. Numbers, hyphens, and punctuation are also confusing, so don’t include any of them. Use keywords that describe your business and what services you offer. Customers looking for a fabric upholstery, for example, are probably going to pick the website that’s simply ‘fabricreupholstery.com’. Be sure to keep it short. A website domain doesn’t need to be a novel.
A site such as https://www.names.co.uk/domain-names will provide the domain zone of your choice. They are divided into regional zones, so they are great for targeting traffic from a certain region – these are the general-purpose domains such as .us, .uk, and .eu.
Don’t try to go for a fancy custom domain right off the bat. Pick something simple, memorable, and optimised for your target customer base.
Buying and Registering the Domain
The second step in buying a domain is to check that it’s available. Use a domain checker to see the options available for your chosen name.
Once you’ve found a name that works for your business and has not been claimed by anyone else, make sure that you buy it and fill out all the required information to complete the domain registration. You might also want to buy and register domain names that sound similar to yours, just to avoid anyone trying to willfully direct customers away from your business.
Confirm Your Domain Ownership
The final step is the simplest. Just confirm your ownership of the domain using the email address you used to register and purchase it.
And that’s it! Follow these steps to go out and register your business’s perfect website domain.