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Thursday 14th November 2019 at 09:03 By Rob |
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How do you choose the right domain name? There's so many factors that go into it that it can sometimes just get confusing. I've written up some helpful tips to help you decide what domain name is right for you.
Skip this section if you already know! But, we don’t want to assume that everyone does and don’t want to leave anyone behind.
A domain name is simply your address on the internet, for example:-
MyAntiquesCompany.com
SharlottesAntiquesShop.co.uk
A domain name is something you have to register, and it’s always registered for a certain number of years (usually 1 or 2 years), and then renewed.
Oftentimes we get asked about what type of domain people should buy and what the difference is between them. To start off with, the bit at the end of the domain name e.g.. .co.uk, .com, .uk etc, is called the "TLD" (top level domain). The difference between them is that .com TLD's are international, and anyone can access them. .co.uk TLD's are obviously for the UK and you can now get .uk too.
As domain names are running out a large selection of other TLD's have been released in the last few years, such as the ones below but these TLD's can often cost more than the traditional ones
For the most par they are, yes.
Research into SEO and Google rankings shows that having these TLD's are now just as good as the .com etc, as Google is now used to them being in existence, so on a whole they don't affect your search engine rankings. Although, if someone already owns SharlottesAntiqueShop.com it isn't a good idea to register the same domain with a different TLD.
You can protect your brand by securing variations of your domain name with different TLD's.
Reasons why you'd want to protect your brand by buying variations (or other TLDs):-
a) If you own SharlottesAntiqueShop.com but you don't own the .co.uk or .uk variation of it then a competitor could buy it and redirect it to their own website
b) Someone could buy it and put a malicious website on it or just for the sake of catching the people who put your web address in incorrectly.
c) Incase someone types in the web address wrong! No matter how many times you tell people that your web address is SharlottesAntiqueShop.com, there will always be someone that will type it in incorrectly and visit the .co.uk version instead, and if that happens and you don't have it redirected to your website then there could be a chance that you lose that customer.
My advice is would be if you're going to call your business Sharlotte's Antique Shop and you're in the UK, then you should consider securing the following domains:
You could go as far as buying other variations with hyphens in, like Sharlottes-AntiqueShop.com, but then where will it ever end!?. So we’ll leave that up to you!
Should I use hyphens in my domain name?
One hyphen is fine, two hyphens is a no-go.
So for example Sharlottes-AntiqueShop.com is fine but Sharlottes-Antique-Shop.com is SEO suicide! Research into SEO and Google rankings says that more than one hyphen will have disastrous effects on your search engine rankings.
It also comes across very spammy and is really long winded, so use one hyphen maximum!
To find out if a domain name is available to register you can use http://whois.domaintools.com.
If you're a client of ours, we'll register the domain name for you which makes it easier for you and that also means that your website and domain name is in the same place. This will also take the risk out of losing your domain name as we automatically renew them for you!
A premium domain name is one that someone has already bought, but instead of you being able to buy for the small amount you usually would, they list it for sale for hundreds, thousands or sometimes evens tens of thousands of pounds. Cheeky, huh?
Known as domain name squatters, these people possibly own millions of domain names between them that appear as though they're already registered, when they're actually for sale.
Perhaps in one of these circumstances
Tips when buying a premium domain name
Why yes there is, you can get them from https://sedo.com/, and at the time of writing this article there are a number of Antique related domains available on Sedo such as:
Whilst having a popular search term, like “antique silver” in your domain name is useful for Google rankings, it won’t necessarily put you at the top of Google as there’s thousands of variables involved whenever someone searches on Google. So whilst it’s definitely helpful, it’s not a one stop shop to get yourself at the top of Google.
It's really important to choose the right domain name because of Google SEO, memorability, ease of typing it in and lot's more reasons as covered above. It's also really important to secure the other domains related to your company name to ensure you're protecting your brand from fraudsters who want to ride off the back of your success or tarnish your name!
Our websites come with a choice of up to three free domain names* which we can help you pick. So get in touch today to find out how we can help you sell online easily with free domain names.
*Number of free domain names depends on which monthly package you choose and includes .co.uk, .uk and .com domain names. Excludes premium domain names or domain names already registered
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