Choosing the best domain name for your business

Choosing the best domain name for your website is very important. Think of it as where your website lives on the internet – it’s easy for people to get lost if they can’t work out where you live! But how do you get started?

Choosing your domain name should be based on the goals you have for your business. Are you looking for local, national or international recognition? Do you want to dramatically increase your online sales or does your website just need to establish a brand presence?

Whether you are looking for local, national or international recognition, increased sales or a brand presence you need to think about what type of domain name will serve you best. There are two main types of domain name you can choose for your website; descriptive or branded.

A branded domain name uses the name of your company, for example www.netconnexions.co.uk

A descriptive domain name may not be the name of your company but a description of what you do. For example, Orchid Telecom uses www.smallbusinesstelephonesystems.co.uk

There are many arguments about which type of domain name is best, here we give you some info to help you determine which type of domain name is best for your business.

Branded domain names

Most people think that their company name should be their domain name, although this is generally good advice, using your company name only gets people to your website who already know who you are and what you do. The domain will help you attract your existing customers no problem, as they can likely already spell your company name and guess your domain name. But there’s a chance that a new customer, who doesn’t know you exist, won’t be able to guess your company name and type your long, hard to spell company domain name into their browser and find you! This is only one of the factors that make choosing a branded domain name require a little more leg work. To ensure that potential customers recognise your brand name and associate it with the product or services you are selling you need to work much harder with your marketing and branding to get your name out there and dominate your marketplace.

Therefore, when choosing to use a branded domain name, we would recommend securing multiple domain names for your website. The full company name, any commonly misspelled versions of the company name and a .co.uk or .com version to help limit missing out on valuable custom.

Descriptive domain names

The best thing you can do for your website is gain as much exposure as possible by getting well listed in search engines through ‘SEO’ or Search Engine Optimisation. Choosing a descriptive domain name is good for SEO. Think of SEO as being like a sat-nav guiding potential new customers towards your website – only the destination is defined by the words a potential customer types into a search engine. Each time a somebody searches for a product or service in a search engine, the search engine suggests websites where you can find that product or service. A descriptive domain name increases your chances of being listed as one of those destinations as the search engine will match up the descriptive words in your domain name with the descriptive words that person has typed into the search engine.

Therefore, when opting for a descriptive domain name, it’s wise to do a little research on good ‘keywords’ or search terms for your products or services and try to fit those keywords into your domain name. For example, Orchid Telecom have the domain name www.smallbusinesstelephonesystems.co.uk and they perform extremely well in search engine rankings, having appeared on page one on Google for quite some time now. Although the descriptive domain name is only a small factor in achieving successful search engine rankings, a little help goes a long way! Another benefit of using a descriptive domain name is that it gives potential customers an idea of what your business is about before they visit, eliminating the possibility of disappointment when they don’t find what they are looking for. As well as that, customers find it much easier to remember descriptive domain names, as they describe the product or service they are looking for.

To summarise

Branded or descriptive domains are both great but bare in mind the goals of your business; descriptive domains help with SEO allowing you to reach a wider audience and a branded domain name can help get your company name out there.