Choosing the right domain for your business or project is as important as choosing the right name.
A domain is the address or unique name of a website or blog on the Internet. Choosing the right domain name for our business is as important as choosing the right name, as it determines, to a large extent, your position on the Internet. Choosing it incorrectly can weaken your web presence or make you look unprofessional.
To begin with, consider that a domain name is composed of two parts: name and extension. Both are equally important for SEO positioning and you should pay the same attention to them.
We will give you some tips that will help you in your quest to choose a successful domain.
Domain Name
Before choosing your domain name you need to ask yourself some questions and answer them honestly: What do you want to achieve with your website? What is the geographic area where you plan to have a presence?
The golden rule is to choose a simple, short and clear domain name that explains what your website is about. In the past, long domains were recommended to make them more precise, but the truth is that it is easier for the general public to remember a short name; so today most brands are choosing to use a domain with this feature.
It is recommended that the domain be composed of one out of these three words: brand, keyword and area of influence; or a combination of them.
It seems a little obvious that in the domain you include the name of your brand or business, however as the registration is worldwide it is very common that your company or brand name is already registered as a domain in some other country. If this is your case you will have to use your creativity to modify your future domain.
This is when you can make use of a keyword related to your business, which helps you modify your brand name to become a unique domain.
It is fundamental that you determine the geographical area of influence of your business, that is to say, if it is a local, national, multinational or global business.
If the area of influence is small, it is better for that information to appear in the domain name, so that your website appears in the search for people in your area. For example, if you have barbershops only in your city it is better that your domain is something like barbershopleon.com, so that it appears only in the searches of local businesses.
On the other hand, if you have branches all over the country you can choose something like: barbershopmexico.com or omit the place entirely.
Mistakes to Avoid
Keep in mind, that the domain is a way to present yourself to your customers and you want them to remember you easily when they search for you on the Internet. That’s why it’s a good idea not to choose complicated names. As far as possible, you should also avoid special characters like hyphens.
As with the name of your business, check that the name can be pronounced and that it does not have a pejorative or obscene meaning in another part of the world.
Use the EMD, or Exact Match Domain. EMD is the result of using an exact keyword as our domain name, this at first seems an ideal technique, however this is not always the case.
Using this technique is fine in a niche market with low competition. However, if your niche market is highly competitive, the margin of advantage is reduced and can even be counterproductive, as Google considers these domains to be made to deceive the algorithm and may classify them as spam.
The extension
The extension is a suffix whose function is to catalogue your website and give structure to the Internet. The search engines take them into account to show your website in the search results according to the territory and the activity.
They can be classified into three groups: The Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLD), Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLD) and the thematic domains.
Some examples of the most popular generic domains are:
.com used regularly for companies.
.org for non-commercial and non-profit organizations.
.net used for technical Internet infrastructure sites.
The advantage of these extensions is that they cover a large number of market niches and there are no restrictions on activity or territory, so you can register any type of business anywhere in the world; in addition, users are more accustomed to them so it is easier to remember them.
However, the disadvantage is that since you are not linked to any activity or geographical region, it is difficult to appear in searches with more filters, so your competition is thousands of websites.
Country Code Top Level Domains, or territorial domains classify sites according to their region of registration, they are suffixes like .mx, .ar, or .es. If you do not intend to expand to an international market, it is best to use an extension of this type, so you only have to worry about local competition and you don’t get lost among thousands of other pages.
Today there are new territorial domains more specific to cities and regions such as .cal from Catlauña or .gal from Galicia. The disadvantage of these terminations is that they have restrictions and, in many cases, you have to prove your physical location and that your website is in the official language of the region.
The evolution of domains continues and now you can choose extensions with very specific themes, like .soccer, .bar, .hotel. Google’s search algorithm considers these words as much or more than the keywords, so this opens up new possibilities for websites with a defined activity.
You can make the most of these extensions within your domain name to make it different and at the same time improve your search engine positioning.
Redirect different domains
If you have money to invest it is advisable to register several domains with the same name but with different extensions, for example if your main domain is espaciocreativos.com you can buy espacioscreativos.org, .net or .mx.
This will allow you to redirect these searches to your home page, increasing their traffic, and it will help you protect your brand, preventing someone else from registering them as theirs with other extensions.
Registering a domain name
To register a domain, it is necessary to do it with an authorized provider or registrar. For example, here you can find a list with all the accredited registrars for .mx.
When you have chosen your provider, you will have to fill out a form to register as the owner of that domain; you should make sure that your data is registered as the owner and not the designer or programmer of the page, to avoid legal problems.
It is important that you consider that domains are not eternal, they expire and you have to pay to renew them. The duration of a domain goes from a minimum of one year to a maximum of ten years.
Your provider will notify you when the domain is about to expire. If you don’t make a renewal, there is a grace period in which you can recover it, but after that someone else can make use of it. That’s why it’s very important to keep an eye on the times, so you don’t lose everything you’ve built with your website.
In conclusion, choosing a domain name is a task that involves making several decisions and in each of them you must keep in mind the objectives of your business. In the end, everything counts to position it.
Comment on our social media if you know other tips to choose a successful domain.
