You’ve built your business from scratch. You’ve sweated, shed tears, and worked through countless days and nights and now you have a growing and successful business to call your own. You’re looking at your marketing now, trying to generate a bit more traction and getting your website is key to that. So, in this post, we thought we’d help you to build the best domain name possible to get you seen.
What is a domain?
Everything on the internet runs through numbers, computers are just giant calculators after all. Every address on the internet is ACTUALLY a series of numbers called an IP address. You may have seen those but have no idea what they are. Put simply, an IP address is a string of numbers identifying a computer/location on the internet.
The difficulty of having all of these numbers for addresses is that, unless you’re Derren Brown, how on earth could a regular person remember all of those numerical addresses?! Most people these days only retain one or two important telephone numbers, let alone a unique 12-digit number for every website they want to visit. That’s where domain names come in.
A domain name is a mask that a website’s address wears to let you, the user, remember how to get to a website. It is a string of text that is mapped to an IP address, which means that it is some text which you type into an address bar to get to a website.
For example, Facebook has several IP addresses such as 69.63. 176.13. It’s much easier to remember facebook.com than that number code!
It’s all about levels
Now you know what the Domain Name is, let’s look at the bits that make it.
You will probably recognise the three main parts of the domain (also known as a URL). They are the Sub-Domain, Domain Name and Top-level Domain which basically equates to an example like this:
The www. is the sub-domain and these days you generally don’t need to worry about it’s basically always www. let’s move on. The Domain Name is the bit where you incorporate your business name or something important which signifies what you do. And the Top Level Domain is a little string of text which is actually the first and most important part of your address.
The Top-Level Domain is the bit of the address which tells the browser where to look. It indicates where your website is stored. And there are now LOTS of different TLDs to choose from.
Choosing the right Top-Level Domain
Surprisingly, if you want to build the best domain for your business then MUST start by picking the best Top-Level Domain.
According to a 2010 survey by Nominet, 81% of British net users prefer to use a .co.uk website than a.com when buying on the internet. That is a significant amount of trust to tap into simply by buying domain with the right Top-Level Domain.
With co.uk you are getting familiarity. There are actually tonnes of TLDs you could buy into, .net .org and .uk but you know what? People KNOW .co.uk, and people naturally trust what they know. In these days of scammers and con artists it’s no wonder that when presented with other new options 93% of British people choose the TLD they recognise.
Interestingly, you could actually make a saving as well. A .com TLD is a universal, internationally recognised extension but it is less trusted by the UK pubic and they cost more! In this case, if you choose to build the best domain for your business you will actually save you money.
Buy a better Domain Name
Naturally, you probably want to get your business name as your domain name, but is this necessarily the best domain for your business?
You need to be conscious of a couple of things when thinking of a domain name – is it memorable? Can people spell it? Is it too long? The longer and more complicated the Domain Name, the more likely people will misspell it, forget it or not bother using it.
Here’s 5 tips for choosing a great domain name so you can build the best domain for your business:
- Keep the Domain Name short – try to keep it under 15 characters long
- Use business related keywords – you may not be able to get your specific business name (especially if it is something quite common like London Car Cleaners), but how about keywords related to what you do? How about ‘waxandshine’ instead? Using keywords will also help your Google ranking
- Avoid double letters – they just encourage misspelling and they are also difficult to spot
- Build brand – what did Amazon start out doing? Selling books. Did they call their website www.sellbooks.com though? No. They chose to build brand from the Address upwards. You can too.
- Keep it easy to pronounce and spell – you want to encourage a little word of mouth and sharing, then people need to be able to say it and then spell it after hearing it
Now you know…
There you go, a few tips to help you to build the best domain for your business! It’s not an exact science, but with these tips and guidance you will find yourself getting significantly more traffic to your new website. Key takeaways? Keep it short and simple, and keep it .co.uk
Hey, you could always get in touch and we will not only help you by building you a beautiful website, but we will offer the right guidance to get your site seen.
