You’ve done your homework and armed yourself with a good chunk of information for your new website – now let’s look at your domain name. If you already have one, great! These days 90% of our clients already have one, but if your business is new or you’re looking for a name change, here are a few guidelines in selecting the domain name you’ll call home:
- Pick the obvious – Match your domain name to your brand. We’re Neighborhood Image, so neighborhoodimage.com was the obvious choice.
- Pick a variation that makes sense – You do your research and find out your business name is already taken. What now? Consider other options and your location – joeshomerenovations.com might be taken, but what about joesrenovations.com or marionhomerenovations.com? Keep your domain name as relevant as possible.
- Avoid hyphens and numbers – It’s far easier to tell someone your domain name is “neighborhood image dot com” than it is to say “neighborhood dash image 740 dot com”
- Make sure your domain is spelled right – If the domain you want is available and it seems like it’s too good to be true (you just can’t believe that no one thought to snatch it up already), double and triple check that you spelled it right! We’ve had to break the hearts of a client or two when we point out the misspelled name in the domain they registered.
- Break your domain down – Sean pointed this out to me as something he does from time to time. He’ll break down domain names and look at the words as they run together to make sure it doesn’t spell something totally inappropriate.
This post is part of our Website 101 series. Read more in the series:
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