Choosing the Right Domain Name

Posted by expeedtech on July 30th, 2013

For any website, it’s probably the most important decision that the operator will make; it’s the difference between an address that the general public will remember, and one that disappears off the face of the Earth without a trace in no time at all. It is of the utmost importance to choose the correct domain name for any website.

A website is part of an overall marketing strategy in most instances, and the domain name chosen will be replicated on stationery, website search engine listings, directories, and in countless other locations. Therefore, choosing the wrong domain name to start with can prove problematic when it comes to having to change it later in the life of the website.

The problem with domain names is that they can only be allocated to one registrant at a time, like a phone number, except on a worldwide rather than national basis. This means that people have to become a little creative with the domain names: Google is the prime example. Until they registered that name, the word didn’t even exist … now, a decade and a half later, not only is it a universally known word, it is also a verb!

Creative domain names have a downside too: if it is not a word that people know, then it takes quite a marketing exercise to have people remember the domain name that has been chosen and be able to spell it. A few websites have failed - some of them quite spectacularly – because they have tried to be too clever with a domain name and the public have just not gotten it.

So, what to do when the ideal name has already been taken? This is where the wide variety of Top Level Domains (or TLDs) come into play. Almost everyone is familiar with domain names ending with .com, but the reality of the situation is that almost all individual words, and two- and three-word combinations ending in .com have already been allocated. Rather than coming up with a new word completely, or using a very long (and prone to typographic error) .com domain name, one should consider the benefits of a domain name ending in something other than .com. Recently ICANN (the global internet address registry) released a raft of valid TLDs for immediate registration, and there are more planned for future release.

Every country has its own TLD, and websites specialising in a country are being encouraged to use these country-specific TLDs; in Australia we use the .au suffix (although it is always combined with something else, usually .com.au or .net.au etc.), the UK use the .uk TLD (again in combination with something else such as .co.uk or .org.uk), France for example uses the .fr TLD with no other requirements on the name, likewise most other countries. Besides these country-specific TLDs there are ones for per-industry-sector, like .travel, .biz for generic businesses, and so on. Domain names don’t even need to use the Latin character set now either although if a domain name uses non-Latin characters and trades in an area where the specialty characters are not readily available on a keyboard that can also be problematic.

With sufficient investigation and willingness to be flexible about the TLD that is used, it is often possible to register a domain name for which the .com address has already been registered; and often in countries like Australia and others, a TLD like .com.au is the one which is people more often associate with a website which could prove advantageous.

Expeed has a wide range of TLDs available for registration direct from their website.

For any website, it’s probably the most important decision that the operator will make; it’s the difference between an address that the general public will remember, and one that disappears off the face of the Earth without a trace in no time at all. It is of the utmost importance to choose the correct domain name for any website.

A website is part of an overall marketing strategy in most instances, and the domain name chosen will be replicated on stationery, website search engine listings, directories, and in countless other locations. Therefore, choosing the wrong domain name to start with can prove problematic when it comes to having to change it later in the life of the website.

The problem with domain names is that they can only be allocated to one registrant at a time, like a phone number, except on a worldwide rather than national basis. This means that people have to become a little creative with the domain names: Google is the prime example. Until they registered that name, the word didn’t even exist … now, a decade and a half later, not only is it a universally known word, it is also a verb!

Creative domain names have a downside too: if it is not a word that people know, then it takes quite a marketing exercise to have people remember the domain name that has been chosen and be able to spell it. A few websites have failed - some of them quite spectacularly – because they have tried to be too clever with a domain name and the public have just not gotten it.

So, what to do when the ideal name has already been taken? This is where the wide variety of Top Level Domains (or TLDs) come into play. Almost everyone is familiar with domain names ending with .com, but the reality of the situation is that almost all individual words, and two- and three-word combinations ending in .com have already been allocated. Rather than coming up with a new word completely, or using a very long (and prone to typographic error) .com domain name, one should consider the benefits of a domain name ending in something other than .com. Recently ICANN (the global internet address registry) released a raft of valid TLDs for immediate registration, and there are more planned for future release.

Every country has its own TLD, and websites specialising in a country are being encouraged to use these country-specific TLDs; in Australia we use the .au suffix (although it is always combined with something else, usually .com.au or .net.au etc.), the UK use the .uk TLD (again in combination with something else such as .co.uk or .org.uk), France for example uses the .fr TLD with no other requirements on the name, likewise most other countries. Besides these country-specific TLDs there are ones for per-industry-sector, like .travel, .biz for generic businesses, and so on. Domain names don’t even need to use the Latin character set now either although if a domain name uses non-Latin characters and trades in an area where the specialty characters are not readily available on a keyboard that can also be problematic.

With sufficient investigation and willingness to be flexible about the TLD that is used, it is often possible to register a domain name for which the .com address has already been registered; and often in countries like Australia and others, a TLD like .com.au is the one which is people more often associate with a website which could prove advantageous.

Expeed has a wide range of TLDs available for registration direct from their website.

Author Bio:

Michael Collins is a Manager at Expeed Technology. He is vastly experienced in ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, Web Hosting, SQL Server,domain name registration, Azure. His company Expeed Technology is a provider of premium Australian web hosting services focusing on Microsoft technologies. They provide- web hosting,domain hosting, email hosting, virtual servers, hosted Exchange and hosted Share Point.