How to Select a Domain Name - Webdesy

Hi, it’s Ken from WebDesy.com. Today, we’re gonna talk about picking a domain name. Plus I’ll offer you a free bonus somewhere in the end of the video. Picking the right domain name is a very important aspect of your site creation, because that’s exactly what you’ll have to optimize your site for. Plus it’s going to be the brand name that your customers and prospects will find you by. I’ve collected a few tips that should give you an idea about what factors to keep in mind while picking a domain name for your online business. I tried to create the list in descending order but that is a very subjective thing in many cases. So, don’t rely on that too much. Just see what’s most crucial for your particular case. So, let’s move on to the first slide.... Dot-Com it! You definitely need to make sure that your domain name is a .com TLD In case you don’t know, TLD stands for Top Level Domain. So, you need a .com domain name for your site because most people assume that it should be exactly like that (site name and .com in the end0. For example, if somebody memorized that your site is called “WebDesy”, they’ll most likely add “.com’ in the end. Even if you remind that a few time, it won’t work. They’ll still go to the .com site in most cases. That’s kinda cut in stone in our minds that we tend to add .com in the end of a site address. That happens to me as well. So, whenever possible - even if you have to shell out a bit - just buy that domain name, because doing so, you make sure that you don’t lose any customers that can potentially buy your product or order your services. You also need to register the .net and .org versions, because you may lose customers if some of them go to .net or .org (instead of .com) for some reason or other. Plus those domains names can be purchased by your competitors, which can be dangerous for your business, because your customers will go to your competitor’s site. The funny part is that WebDesy did not go that extra mile and did not register neither the.org nor .net version of WebDesy. So, if I really get on your nerves some day, you may want to register those domain names so that I get less customers and money. :) It was a joke actually. Again, don’t get me wrong and don’t do that. Please … Now, the next slide ... Easy to Type One more thing to keep in mind is that your domain name should be easy to type. For starters, if it’s not, your prospects can go to a different site (let alone your competitor’s). I mean if they mistype and land to a totally different site. Secondly, they can just see a broken page (if the domain name is not taken), think that your business has gone belly up, and turn to your rivals, again. And thirdly, in case your domain is easy to type, people are more likely to do it properly. Just remember that we are all lazy bones. I personally would not type in a domain name if I’m pretty much sure that I’ll mistype something. Well, I would type if I was dying to get to that site though. :) Ok, moving on. Easy to Remember When your site and consequently brand get more or less well-known, people will start talk about you. That’s why you need to ensure that your name is easy to remember so that John can easily recall the website name that Jack gave him the other day. Other than that, it just makes sense that people should be able to effortlessly keep your website name in their minds and refer to it when needed. And onto the next tip. Keep it Short You need to keep your website name short because you want people to easily type it in their browser address bar. Plus it makes your domain name easier to memorize. And you’ll be able to place your domain name on your business card or any other branded stuff. Otherwise it can be an issue if you want to put your brand name on some office supplies, for instance. The next tip is ... Make Spelling Guessable It’s a big thing as well, because you want people to be able to spell your domain name if they just hear it somewhere (in a podcast or something like that). In the case of WebDesy.com, I actually found an issue that I still need to take care of. The point is that it’s highly likely that you can misspell WebDesy.com and type in WebDaisy.com instead. The problem is that WebDaisy.com actually exists and there’s a nice daisy image in the middle of the home page. It sounds that I’ll have to contact the owner of the domain name and buy it from him. It’s not really crucial at this point because there’s less than 10 monthly searches for ‘webdaisy’ now, but you never know what will happen when I promote my site and prospects start going to Webdaisy.com instead of Webdesy.com . And that proves one more time that your domain name should not be confused with someone else’s. I did learn my lesson :) Well, the hard way though.. Now. let’s move to the next slide ... Neither Hyphens Nor Numbers Using both hyphens and numbers can cause confusion and you’ll have to explain every single time how to properly spell your website address. Just stick with words put together, no special characters like hyphens or numbers. Back in the day, I used to work in a company, which had a domain name with a hyphen. And when talking over the phone, I had to always explain how to properly spell the name of the site (if our customers needed to find some specific info and wanted me to walk them through step-by-step). They were asking a-a-all the time,” Is it a dash or a hyphen?” And stuff like that. So, apart from SEO issues, it can cause pretty major concerns in terms of making both your site and your domain name user friendly. Moving on... Commercial Appeal The idea of this point is that your brand name and website address should look great in terms of commercial use. It should be short, memorable, and vivid. You should have no problem with placing your domain name on billboards and city lights, ads on the radio and TV. Make sure to be 100% confident that your brand name is not causing any negative hints or assumptions in the language of your target audience. Some car manufacturer called their car “Nova”, which means “no go” in Spanish. The chances are it’s not the best name for a car. :) Right? And actually that did not have much success in Spanish-speaking countries. OK, next tip. Numeral Substitutions Nowadays it’s pretty normal (to an extent) to see phrases like “4 you” (where 4 is a digit), “gr8” (where the “eight” portion is represented by a digit), “m8” (again, “eight” as a digit), etc, but it’s most definitely not a good idea to use such grammatical constructions in domain names, because it’ll cause a lot of confusion and misunderstanding of how exactly to spell your domain name. If you’re really tempted to use something like that, just think whether it’s worth it. By the way, the search engines don’t understand such things either. Use it and lose a portion of your customers or not use it and get more customers for your business. What do you say? Exactly! :) Let’s move to the next tip, bro. No Slang Just like in the case with using numerical substitutions, you should avoid slang words like the letter “u” (instead of the proper “Y-O-U”) and so on. Though it may sound really cool, odds are using such words can confuse your prospects and the last thing any business wants is a confused prospect. That’s because a confused customer does not buy stuff. So, no slang in your domain name. Moving on …. Exact Match Domains Discoverable domains aka emd are those that have keywords in them, such as www.purses.org Or www.teethwhitening.com They used to work pretty well back in the day, but things have changed since the Google’s EMD update. The update struck hard low-quality sites that used keywords in their domain names. Again, low-quality sites only seem to have suffered from this update. It means that if you really want to use such a domain name, you need to ensure that your site is a high-quality one and will stay so. That boils down to the fact that Google just removed the advantage that EMD owners had before. And that’s about it. So, don’t rely too much on EMD any more. As a matter of fact, you need to create high-quality sites in any case (regardless of any Google updates), but in the case of an exact match domain, you’ll have to be of really top notch quality, because otherwise you’ll most likely be hit hard by the almighty Google. Now, let’s see our next tip. Brainstorm One of the best practices of coming up with domain name ideas is to select about 5 keywords that your site will be about and just try to create a name based on them by mixing and matching. In case you want to use a discoverable domain name, you just need to see how you can combine your keywords so that they make sense both for the user and Google. If WebDesy wanted to go that route, we would try to combine words like “web design” (two words), “webdesign”, “company”, “bureau”, “web designers”. So the domain name would most likely be something along the lines of “webdesignbureau.com” or something like that. If you want to make a brandable domain name - just like we did at WebDesy.com - you need to use your keyword to create a domain name that is memorable and at the same time it should be obvious right off the bat what your site is all about. Otherwise people will leave it in a matter of milliseconds. We just took the “webdesign” word and modified it so that it’s a unique name, but the user won’t have to think twice while figuring out what we actually do on our site. We do webdes...ign. Nuf said. :) And moving on to the last slide.... Uniqueness You need to strive for being as unique with your domain name as possible. Don’t just use a misspelling or the plural form of a well-known website name. In the first place, it’s just lame. Secondly, if you want to be a respectful company, such a domain name will prevent you from becoming one. As a matter of fact, there’re a few really useful online tools that allow you to brainstorm for domain names or even provide you with ready-made solutions. If you wanna see those tools, you can just click on the link below, in the description of the video. The main message that I’m trying to convey here is that you need to think what is best for your visitor. And just go from there. The user wants your website to be useful, unique, easy to memorize and spell out. Plus the name of your site should make it totally clear what exactly you offer on your site (services or products) so that the visitor does not have to waste his time trying to figure that out. So, user friendliness - first and SEO - last. Remember - easy and unique! Now, it’s bonus time. If you’re still unsure as for what exactly domain name to use, you can contact me directly and I’ll personally give you advice for your particular case. You can contact me via email at webdesy@gmail.com or just Skype me. My Skype ID is kenneth.von.rauch If you think the screencast was worth your while, feel free to like the video by clicking the Like button. 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