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Choosing the right domain name for your business

Written by Matthew Simmons

Your domain name is your business’ home on the web, and is the heart of your online identity, so it’s important to choose wisely.  It is the gateway for your prospects and customers to see what you have to offer. It tells people who you are, where you are, and what you do.

Back in the day, for the UK, there were about 4 domain extensions – domain.com, domain.org, domain.net, domain.co.uk.  There are now over 400 domain extensions to choose from, giving more opportunity to find a memorable name with a suffix that fits your business.

Re-designing your Website? Review your domain Names

Although you can buy a domain name at any time, a good time to review your domain name strategy is when you are re-designing your website.  When buying a domain name, there are some important things to consider. There are rules that apply to the formatting of domain names, but there are strategic issues to think about.

Are there any Rules?

You can find an exhaustive list of the rules at the UK domain regulator Nominet, but some of the basic rules are:

  •     Domains must use only letters, numbers, or hyphens but cannot begin or end with a hyphen or a number.
  •     .com, .net, .org, and .info domain names cannot exceed sixty seven characters in total.
  •     .info and .biz domain names must have at least three characters, not including .info or .biz.
  •     Domain names are not case-sensitive and cannot include spaces.
  •     Two-letter domain names are no longer permitted.

So within reason, you can use any combination of letters, words and phrases to create a killer domain name for your business.

What are the Options for your Business?

Also, you can own any number of domain names that can be associated with business, these can all be forwarded to the main website.

This means that an accountant Jones and Smith can have their website sitting under for example www.tax-accountant-reading.co.uk and have both www.jonesandsmith.accountants and  www.jonesandsmith.co.uk pointing to it. Visitors using any of these domain will end up in the same place.

Beware also researching domain name availability yourself using google to find domain and hosting providers.  From personal experience, some are unscrupulous and will purchase a domain name themselves when they know someone is looking for it and will try and sell it to you at a massive premium.

We can help you with domain strategy and registration for your business.

Call us for a free discussion.

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