Selecting a Domain Name: 5 tips.

The approach to a good domain name varies depending on the nature of the website you wish to develop, but here are some tips on the things I considered when choosing my domain name:

1. Keywords
For the purposes of this project I decided to base my domain name around the keywords I would be targetting, thus WebsiteDesignCork.com.

Another approach would have been to find a short, catchy and memorable domain name, but because of the nature of my site I felt it important that it serve as a working case study as well as my business site, and therefore I decided to go with a keyword based domain name.

I discovered, through some keyword research, that ‘web design’ would be a better search term to target than ‘website design’ (more people search for ‘web design’) but since WebDesignCork.com was already taken I decided to settle for WebsiteDesignCork.com.

2. Hyphenation
I also decided to register a non hyphenated name. When it comes to domains which include keywords there is a school of thought which believes a delimiter to isolate keywords helps search engines to more easily identify them. For example website-design-cork.com

However, if you are choosing a hyphenated domain, keep hyphens to a minimum. Domains with too many delimiters can appear quite spammy, and you may find your domain being too similar in appearance to the likes of buy-cheap-viagra-here-now-and-get-a-free-e-book.com. Hyphenated domains can also be awkward to pass on by word of mouth.

A good option would have been to register the hyphenated and non hyphenated version, using the hyphenated as the primary domain and use domain pointing to allow word of mouth.

However, website-design-cork.com was also taken, and so I settled for the non hyphenated version.

3. TLD and region specific searches.
I also considered which TLD (Top Level Domain) to register with, and the best options were .com or .ie.

If I had registered with .ie, I would be likely to get an extra boost on country specific searches – for example when people select the ‘pages from Ireland’ option in Google.

In the end I settled on .com as it is a strong domain, and usually the first TLD people try when attempting to enter your domain from memory.

4. How long to register for.
I decided to register the domain for 10 years, as this too can help with search engine results – for example Google have the ability to check your domain details and it is believed that you may be taken more seriously if you show you are here for the long haul.

5. Word of mouth.
As I’ve already mentioned, in most cases it is important to consider how easy it will be to tell people about your site. Try to keep your domain short, easy to spell and easy to remember..

My site is a little on the long side, however because it is highly descriptive and contains keywords I decided the trade off was worth it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 5:02 pm and is filed under Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.