Choose The Right Domain Name for Your Website

Picking a domain name is one of the most important thing every entrepreneur goes through. It is indeed not easy, but we have compile a simple guide on how you can choose the best domain name for your business without spending days or even months scratching your head of which name you should go for.

Eric Phung

The domain name should be matching with your brand name. If you already have a brand, that's simple. You just need to type in your brand name and add a domain extension like Socialectric.com.

But that would be too easy.

1. Brand Name first or Domain Name first?

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Most of us start from the ground up, so you probably don't know where to start with the name. That's not all. Some company was established before they register for a domain name, unfortunately, the domain name that matches their brand name was taken. Now they either have to buy the domain name they want with a ridiculous amount of money (not guaranteed), or they can start finding the domain name first before they name their brand. Here's how:

Brainstorm about what your core business is about.
List all the keywords that is related to your business.
Go to a domain provider and start typing the keywords in (You can try Godaddy or Namecheap)
We highly recommend that you choose .com over other domain extension due to trustworthiness and easy to remember.
If the domain is available, great, you can go along with that domain name and name your business accordingly.
If not, repeat step 3 with other keywords until you find the best name you like

2. Type of domain extension

There are many groups of Top-level domains including

infrastructure top-level domain (ARPA)
generic top-level domains (gTLD)
generic-restricted top-level domains (grTLD)
sponsored top-level domains (sTLD)
country code top-level domains (ccTLD)
test top-level domains (tTLD)

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Most of us don't even know what they are, but the seven generic top-level domains are the ones we care about. Why? Because they are easy to remember, trustworthy to the Search Engine, and they are often cheaper than other type of domain extensions.

.com (commercial)

.org (organization)

.net (network)

.int (international)

.edu (education)

.gov (government)

.mil (military)

There are also other top level domain names that we start to see many companies have started to adopt like

.io (for Technology, Gaming and Start-up Firms)

.design (for Graphic Art and Fashion)

.business (for Businesses)

.co (Columbia)

.community (for Community)

.info (for Information)

3. Tips on Choosing Your Domain Name

Your domain name should contain a keyword of your core business.
Your domain name must be short (ideally 5-13 words).
Your domain name must be tested for unintentionally errors.

Here is an example on how to pick your domain name

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We are going to be providing pet service, specifically dog care services. Keywords we are looking for may be something like Pet Care, Dog Care, Pet House, Pet Villa, Pet Service, Dog Vacay, Dog Stop, Paw Care, Love Bark...
Ideally we want one keyword so it's easier for the users to type and remember. However, with this example, we will have to match two keywords together to form a domain name. Let's choose Dog Vacay. Then we have petservice.com.

Here are some examples of unintentional inappropriate domain names: