How to choose the best domain name

If you’ve found yourself here, I’ll assume you already know what domain names are and the reasons why you should have your own domain name. But now, you might be asking yourself: how to choose the best domain name?

In my “think of a website as a house” metaphor, your domain name acts like your home address. In fact, ‘homepage’ is the name that Tim Berners-Lee dubbed the first browser screen in 1989. 

Unless you’re running multiple websites, you really only get one (main) domain – it can be a difficult time deciding on a ‘name’.

Here’s what to keep in mind when choosing the best domain name:

Availability

First things first – is the domain you have in mind already taken? You should check before you get too excited. I’ve been let down several times…

Most hosting providers will have a domain search tool within their website so that you can immediately purchase one if it’s available.

💡 Tip: I recommend using this Domain Name Availability Checker on whatsmydns.net. Not only will it show you if it’s registered or not, but you can also check when it expires, and depending on their privacy setting – who the owner is.

Domains are often purchased and resold or held at auction, so it is possible to get an existing domain name without waiting for it to expire, but it will be a lot more expensive than a new one.

Extensions

Over the years, many additional domain extensions have been released but .com continues to be considered the most trustworthy of the bunch.

Introduced in 1985, .com was one of the first top-level domains implemented on the web. 

There are also country-code top-level domains (ccTLD). In Canada, .ca extensions are often used to help identify your business as Canadian-owned and operated. This is especially helpful for those who want to be known as a Canadian-based business.

Did you know? In a survey conducted by SEP, 32% of Americans believe that the .ca domain represents a California-based company/site. 

Nonprofit and charitable groups often utilize the .org extension, as it is short for ‘organization’. These .org extensions lend credibility and trust to its website visitors.

You can also get really creative with extensions if you’re willing to spend a bit more money. For example, some available TLDs are:

• world
  • Eg: bobbys.world instead of bobbysworld.com
• space
  • Eg: open.space instead of wideopenspacesevents.com
• life
  • Eg: blogging.life instead of myblogginglife.com
• store
  • Eg: be3d.store instead of store.be3designs.ca
• design
  • Eg: be3.design instead of be3designs.ca (doesn’t quite work because where did my ‘s’ go? But you get the idea…)

Length

Most businesses use their business name as their domain. This makes sense and is also proactive in that you’re ensuring someone else doesn’t own the domain for your brand.

If you have a long business name, consider your options to shorten it for your domain. Or try thinking of keywords that pertain to your business and are likely to be searched by customers.

On top of that, you will probably require custom email addresses with your domain, which means your username length is added to the domain and extension. 

This is where being mindful of possible character counts come into play. Because, while yes, email software saves email addresses so you don’t have to type or remember them – where else are email addresses listed? On websites, business cards, letterhead, slide decks, social media posts… if you’ve ever tried to make a long email address reside on one single line you know my pain.

This likely played a role in Pricewaterhousecooper’s rebrand in 2010, when their name was shortened to PWC ensuring a much shorter and easier to remember domain.

💡 Tip: I recommend keeping domain names under 16 characters when possible. This helps keep them memorable, easy to type or search, and displays more of your URL when listed.

Keywords

Let’s pretend your business name is Great Granny Gables Ltd. and you make homemade socks. Cute! 

Now, let’s say you listed the following ideas for your domain name and sent it to me for advice:

• greatgrannygablesltd
• greatgrannygables
• greatgranny
• greatgrannysocks
• gggltd
• gggsocks
• gggablessocks
• triplegsocks
• grannyssocks

I would recommend that you consider the following:

Remove the LTD

Information like your business type will typically reside in your website’s footer content next to the copyright and privacy policy. If you need to discuss the importance of how your business is legally set-up, consider discussing it on an About page or in a blog post. 

Ask yourself if your business type is truly important enough to take up characters in your domain name.

Limit Acronyms

Too many acronyms start looking like spam so I would avoid using something like ‘gggltd’ or ‘gggsocks’ where the name of the business or the industry isn’t clear or memorable enough.

Avoid Confusion

Unless you’re using a tagline for ‘triple g’ in your branding – regularly, you may want to avoid this option as the business name could be confused with other Triple Gs (like the professional boxer, the Twitch streamer, or the campground and RV park, or… you get the idea.)

Consider the Future

Domain name choices that contain the keyword ‘socks’ may limit you. If you plan to offer other products in the near future your domain name might be better off left to the brand name alone.

In this example, my first choice is ‘greatgrannygables’. 

Let’s say your business goal is to offer scarves next winter and that you eventually want to sell mittens. A streamlined domain for a business can help with future growth.

I also really like ‘grannyssocks’ as a campaign or marketing landing page URL. It’s playful and authoritative in the sense that these are THE granny’s socks.

Spelling, Typos, and Slang

When writing out your domain name ideas, be sure to read them over while they’re written completely in lowercase.

You may be compelled to use capital letters to help differentiate words in your domain, but like email addresses the internet doesn’t really care about your capitals.

Entering a domain in lowercase, uppercase, or a mixture of both will all yield the same results.

💡 Tip: In print and copy, using capitalization can often help with accessibility by making a string of words easier to read. However, there will be places and situations where your email address or domain are laid out in lowercase letters, so it’s something to be mindful of.

This means that you’ll want to be careful about making any unintended words when two other words are next to one another… you don’t want to be caught on a list of unintentionally inappropriate domain names. 🤭

Domain Forwarding

Many people choose to secure multiple extensions, in order to maintain control over their brand.

For example, while my website is be3designs.ca, I also own the .com version, which redirects to the .ca if used. If you only purchased yourbrand.ca, it would be possible for another individual to purchase yourbrand.com, which could cause confusion for your customers.

When you run marketing campaigns you may want to purchase alternative domains that match your advertising strategies.

Driving users to your home page may not perform as well as sending them to a specific page about the campaign.

This is often why businesses purchase additional domains on top of their brand or ‘home’ domain, and why I would purchase both ‘grannyssocks’ and ‘greatgrannygables’.

Domain Security Tips

Purchase your domain name(s) from a reputable registrar.

Domain costs are generally the same across the board and you may find a deal for your first year, with renewals at full rates.

Check to see what their contact and support options are. You want to be able to contact and speak with a representative as quickly and efficiently as possible if something goes awry with your website or emails.

Do a search for the registrar on your favourite social media platform and see what people are saying about the company from a support and troubleshooting capacity.

Some people host their domains and websites separately.

For example they may host their domains and emails through Microsoft or Google services, but their WordPress website may be hosted at WP Engine or Siteground.

There are a variety of reasons they may choose to do this, including maintaining access to either the domain or the website should one of these entire provider’s services go down.

You should also be able to easily set-up a SSL certificate on your domain to help secure your site. 

This is what ensures your web address works with https:// instead of http://.

Domain name owners must have their contact information, including address, on file with their domain registrar.

Some extensions like CIRA’s .ca automatically come with privacy enabled that will hide your contact information. 

When you purchase a .com however, you need to buy an additional product to protect your domain identification information from being displayed.

Keep the credit card on file in your registrar up to date and be aware of your billing cycle.

9.9 times out of 10, in my experience, a website goes offline due to a lapse in billing. A year is a long time when you can’t remember what you had for breakfast this morning, but when your credit card is up for expiration – add your registrar to the list of services you need to update or down goes your website.

0.1 times out of 10, the server had the hiccups. Check back later.

What domain name will you choose?

Well, we’ve gone through domain availability, extensions, character length, keywords, spelling, slang, forwarding, and security. Wow, you learned a lot!

There isn’t much else left to do but brainstorm your ideas and choose the best domain name for you!