OK, you’ve decided to create a website for your business or hobby. How will people locate you? By your URL. Uniform Resource Locator, in fancy terms, otherwise known as your Domain Name.

What’s In A Domain Name?

Choosing your domain name is as important as naming your business. In the world of search engines, having a keyword or search term as part of your URL helps you appear more readily for that keyword. So, if you sell widgets, www.smithwidgets.com may help you come up for “widget” searches.

Rules of Thumb

Below are our recommendations on what to do and avoid when coming up with a domain name.

• easy to spell
• easy type
• easy to remember
• keep it short
• use keywords that target your area (if applicable or local)
• use an appropriate domain extension (.com, .net, or .org)
• If you’re starting a blog or your personal website, it may be best to use your own name
• avoid numbers
• avoid hyphens
• avoid double letter combinations
• avoid infringement upon another’s business name

If you use slang (u instead of you) or words with multiple spellings (express vs. xpress), it might be harder for customers to find your site. In fact, studies show that your domain name should also be easy to say. Yes, it’s true, we do type these things but it has been found that things that are easy to say and to type are more memorable. Anything you can do to keep your business in the forefront of someone’s mind is a good thing.

Local Hero

If there isn’t a lot of competition for this, you may want to consider adding your city’s name to your domain: gothamgardencenter.com. This is another way to easily rank for local SEO results.

KISS

Keep It Super Short… that way there’s less of a chance someone’s going to misspell your domain name. Always remember, people online have expectations of immediate results! Don’t miss a potential customer or sale because they fell asleep while trying to type your name.

Here’s a great tool to find what your name availability is across domain extensions: https://namechk.com.

P.S. PickleShark offers Free Domain Registration with Web Hosting purchase at checkout.

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