Picking the perfect domain has huge implications for your brand awareness, marketing, and even SEO. The right domain can attract your target audience, drive up recall, and boost trust and credibility for your brand. When starting your search for domains, keep in mind these 6 proven strategies to pick the ideal web address tailored to your business.
1. Make It Memorable
Your domain should be catchy, simple, and easy to remember. This way, it sticks in your customer’s minds and drives up brand awareness through word of mouth. Steer clear of complex series of words or numbers that are hard to recall. Short, sharp domains have much higher memorability. Set your brand up for success with a name that’s short, simple, spellable, speakable, and memorable.
2. Keep It Short
Shorter domains work best. Consider sticking to 2-3 words or less than 12 characters in total. There can be traffic drops significantly for URLs over 12 characters. On top of this, each additional character makes your brand 6 times more difficult to remember.
3. Incorporate Your Brand Name
Work your brand name directly into the domain to solidify your brand identity online. Consistent naming helps customers instantly recognize your site and connects it back to your overall brand values.
Let’s say you run an accounting firm called Balance Books. Domains could include:
- balancebooks.com
- getbalancebooks.com
- itsbalancebooks.com
See how the brand name itself provides an instant association, no matter the exact wording or extension?
4. Check Domain Availability
Ideally, you’ll want to purchase the exact match domain name for your brand. Domain registration works on a first-come, first-served basis across all extensions (.com, .net etc).
If someone has already claimed your domain name, you may need to tweak your branding or get a bit more creative. Adding a location extension like .nyc or .london signals where you operate. A product or service focus like .tech or .design works, too.
Just steer clear of random numbers or hyphens if you want to maximize memorability.
5. Avoid Trademark Pitfalls
Look beyond patents to investigate both registered and common law trademarks relevant to your industry. Someone may own the trademark for your name without having officially registered that right. You can avoid headaches by searching the USPTO database. Then confirm Google brings up 0 relevant results for that company name combination.
6. Include Relevant Keywords
Work relevant keywords into your domain name to describe what your brand offers. This signals search engines you should rank for those terms and helps attract qualified visitors already seeking those offerings.
Let’s say you run a dog training business focused specifically on training support dogs. Some on-point domain options could include:
- fido-supportdogs.com
- k9supporttraining.com
- helperhounds.com
Visitors searching for “support dog training” would instantly recognize these domains can meet their needs. The keywords boost click-through rates as soon as they spot that relevant terminology.
Ready to Find Your Perfect Domain?
Picking the right domain lays the foundation for building awareness and trust with your audience online. By making it memorable, short, on-brand, available, legally airtight, and keyword-rich, you set your business up for success from the start.
