How to Create an SEO-Friendly Domain Name
It’s not hard to start your own business and there are many benefits to doing so. A side business can be a great way to make a bit of extra money without having to give up your current job. Owning your own company gives you the freedom to pursue your dreams in ways that would be impossible when working at a full-time job in someone else’s business. What’s more, entrepreneurship can be incredibly profitable if you choose the right business model and work hard to make your business successful. As an added benefit, self-employment enables you to pick your own work hours and location. You can work from home, work on the weekends if you need to take time off during a weekday, or spend time with your family during the afternoons while you work in the mornings or evenings.
Read more entrepreneurship tips here.
An internet presence is a must for any new business venture, as most people turn to Google to find products and/or services they need or want. There are a number of things you’ll need to do to make it easy for prospective clients to find you online; however, the first step is choosing the right business name and the best domain name for your new site. Following are some tips to get you started on the right track.
Choosing a Business Name
Your business name should be easy to remember. Short names are catchy, but long ones can be as well if you pick the right one. This is especially true if you include your main product and/or core values as part of your business. For instance, a restaurant that specializes in selling seafood may want to include the word “seafood” as part of its business name. A plumber offering eco-friendly products and/or services may want to be known as The Green Plumber or Sustainable Plumbing. Choosing a great business name can make or break a new business.
Including the name of your location in the business can be a good idea for entrepreneurs who offer a location-specific service and/or products but won’t work well for a person who wants to appeal to a broad geographic audience now or in the future. Choosing your surname as your business name can work well for entrepreneurs who are offering services based on their expertise, but it’s often not the right choice unless people already know who you are and what you do. An added disadvantage of choosing your name or surname as the business name is that it would be difficult to sell your business later on if you choose to do so.
Points to Consider When Choosing a Website Name
A website name should combine harmoniously with your business name and domain name, ideally they should all work together. Below you’ll find a list of considerations to keep in mind when choosing a domain name, to make it SEO-Friendly. A domain is like your address on the internet, and if you want searchers to find you easily, it’s a good idea to make sure it’s SEO-Friendly.
Domain Name
There are several factors that make a domain name SEO-friendly. One of the most important is the name. Ideally, it should be short and have a clear connection to your business and its products/services. The latter criterion is especially important if you are building a brand name from scratch and people don’t automatically know what your business has to offer just by looking at the name. Companies such as Nike and Apple can get away with using their business name as the domain name because they are well-known; however, a new restaurant named Alberto’s may want to add an extra word such as Albertosfood or Albertosdining, so Google will rank the site in relevant search queries.
Bear in mind that the best domain names use only lower-case letters. Including numbers, hyphens, and capital letters as part of your domain name will make it look spammy both to users and to search engines. You’ll also want to avoid cheesy adjectives such as “best”, “top”, and “amazing”. Search engines and consumers alike will rank your site based on its name, content, load time, and ease of use, not on what you think of your new venture.
Top-Level Domain Name
Another important aspect of domain name selection is choosing the right top-level domain (TLD). This is the sequence of letters that follows the business name. The .com top-level domain is by far the most commonplace. It’s an ideal choice for many companies because most people expect the domain to end in .com and so may not remember an alternate ending. What’s more, Google recognizes this as a business domain name. The .org ending is typically reserved for non-profit sites and is ideal for an entrepreneur who starts a non-profit and is selling goods/services in connection with this line of work. Google likewise recognizes this domain and its usage.
The .com and .org domain names are hardly the only ones for a person to pick from. There are literally dozens of other options, including .tech, .io, .brand, .me, and .food. Google has made it clear that it treats all generic domain names the same, which means that, theoretically, it doesn’t matter which one you pick for your business. However, the reality is that some TLDs are better than others. Because the .com TLD is so common, it is considered by many consumers to be more trustworthy than other top-level domain names and thus may get more clicks than a site with a unique top-level domain. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best pick for your new business. Many .com domain names are already claimed, which can make it difficult or even impossible for a new business to find a suitable domain name. What’s more, many other domain names are gaining in popularity and trustworthiness, which means that people will easily remember your site and/or trust it if they see it in relevant search engine results. Some particularly good options are .me (for companies with a domain name that denotes action) and .tech (for tech companies).
Additionally, there are country-coded top-level domain names. The TLD for the UK, for instance, is .co.uk. For Australia, it’s .au. These domains are ideal for local businesses in these countries that want to attract a local audience. A restaurant chain in Australia, for instance, will find a localized domain name to be very useful as it tells local customers that the business is a local one. Unlike other top-level domain names, which are treated equally by Google, country-coded TLDs are used as a factor in search ranking to help people who are obviously searching for a local business to find relevant results.
Read this basic guide to SEO friendly URL structures and parameters for more information that can help you create a search engine friendly domain name.
In Summary
Choosing the right business and domain name for your business is an important part of branding. It’s difficult if not impossible to successfully change your business or domain name at a later date, so it’s imperative you get it right the first time. Do careful research, consider your location, the products/services you offer, your target audience, and your future plans for your venture to pick both a business name and domain name that will serve you well long-term.
Making sure your domain is SEO-friendly is also important to your success, as the internet plays a huge role in bringing in clients to a new business. Your domain name should be easy to remember and use only lower-case letters. It should also have a suitable top-level domain to boost the click-through rate and thus earn a high Google placement. Following these criteria will boost your odds of long-term success, so you can reach your professional and personal goals.