Hello!! Today we will be talking, in simple terms, about how to choose your domain name.

Choose a good domain name so that your domain does not look like:

bad domain names

Be careful when choosing your domain name!

This is a question I have been getting a lot, so I have decided to talk a bit more about it. But to start I will add some more questions and we will then ask them all:

  1. Does domain name affect SEO?
  2. What would be the best domain for my website?

Choosing Your Website’s Domain?

This is a good question, but we must be careful as it’s not a “one size fits all” answer and techniques may not be work for every website. But there are some rules that may benefit to Most DOMAIN WEBSITES:

  • a good domain name should be short and not too hard to remember;
  • if your business is targeting Australia only, go for .com.au extension;
  • if you would like to target different countries, you might need to consider buying different extensions like .com for USA, .co.uk for United Kingdom. But, if the keyword is not too competitive and the product really unique, you might be ok with one domain only, perhaps .com
  • If you really want to target a country then you should have a country specific domain and hosting within that country
  • Also, if you are targeting Brazil for example, buy a .com.br domain and have the website translated to Portuguese

Now, I will give a couple of hints based on some situations:

Domain Name for New Business, New Website

  • start with keyword research
  • whenever possible it pays off to have your main keyword on your domain name
  • if your business has a short name, e.g. “Domain” and your business is about “domain choosing” it may pay off to have www.domainchoosing.com.au
  • people that know your business will search by your business name, so it is important for your website to have your business name. It also usually the obvious choice.

Established Business, Shall I Change My Domain?

More often than not the answer is “no”, and “be careful”. Your website age is a really important factor in helping Google understand that your site is well established and not just a scam or a business that will just disappear in a month or two.

  • it is better to have credibility than a domain with keywords;
  • if your business changed names or something similar, and you need to change domains, make sure to redirect all the pages from the old domain to the new one with 301 redirects.

Domain Name and SEO

Why is domain name an important factor in search engine optimisation?

Most search engines, Google inclusive and more importantly, give a really heavy weight to a domain that contains a main keyword. Most Search engines, including Google, give heavy preference to a domain that contains a main key word. E.g. www.domainchoosing.com.au – it is really unlikely that this domain is about anything else but “how to choose your domain”. And search engines understand this. Another point is, as the domain name is usually a business name and search engines want to bring you relevant results, if someone types “domain choosing” it may really well be that there are after the business called “domain choosing”.

Shall I Register Several Domains with My Keywords?

Unless you are planning on developing on this and adding good and relevant content, which will cost you and take a fair bit of your time, the answer is no. Google has been fighting any technique used to mislead or that provides a bad user experience online. This is the equivalent of throwing rubbish on the web and Google will eventually catch up on this and your site can be penalised.

That is it for today!

To finish on a funny note, another funny domain names for you:

funny domain names