A good domain name is synonymous to having a good name. Most parents are usually happy after child birth, so they carefully select a name for the child and in places like Africa, extended family members also give the child a special name.
This is to prove that names are not just cultural but very significant.
Domain name defined
A domain name is basically the address of a website online, so for instance this blog is called Conditioned for Accomplishments (CFA) with the domain name www.CFAgbata.com which I formed out my first, middle and surname names.
Tips to help you select a good Domain name:
1. Go for a Keyword Rich Domain name
SEO again? Someone might say not again, why so much noise about SEO?
Well, it’s simply because SEO professionals now play a major role both in choosing a good domain name as well as building a new website, so SEO plays a key role here.
CFAgbata.com is no doubt becoming an authority domain by the day but this domain name is nowhere near being keyword rich. Think about it, who is going to search for cfagbata online? It is not a product nor a service, so it’s tough.
Now, compare the domain name CFAagbata.com with www.AwesomeBizTips.com, owned by Fayo Williams, one of my partners and students. She has a much better keyword rich domain that is likely to do much better because ordinarily people are searching for “biz tips”
Now am I worried about the CFAgbata.com domain name not being keyword rich? The answer is a Yes. As early as yesterday, I asked my US based SEO colleague what he thought about it? Below is a screenshot of his reply;
Marketing takeaway: Make sure your domain name contains a highly searched keyword or keyword phrase.
2. A Good Domain Name should be Short
Yes you are free to register a 50 word domain name but why do that? Imagine the pain you would put your clients and subscribers through if you do that?
Imagine someone says to you, my domain name is callmeandIwillbetherewiththefoodforyoualone.com? (this will be every hilarious to see or hear). This is one of the reasons I chose to stick with CFAgbata.com, though not keyword rich, it is only 7 characters which means it meets one of the criteria of a good domain name.
I remember back then it was a struggle between fredagbata.com and CFAgbata.com, then I had not yet come up with this whole CFA concept. I actually registered the domain name fredagbata.com but the guy refused to develop my blog even after payment.
Boy was I sad? You bet I was but guess what? I am glad he never did because that bad experience helped me come up with the CFA concept which I am so very proud of today. This is a case of turning a bad experience into a good story!
Marketing Takeaway: Insist on a shorter domain name, if possible try other extensions. The shorter the better.
3. Register some other extensions of your domain name
Domain names come with different extensions while some i.e. .com, .net, .org, are referred to as Top level domains (TLDs) others are known as country specific domains i.e. .com.ng is for Nigeria, .com.uk is for United Kingdom, .co.za is for South Africa.
Almost, all countries of the world have theirs and some smart nations are using theirs as a foreign exchange earner. For example .tv is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Islands of Tuvalu, a small but smart country that has earned some much from this gift of Nature.
I understand that Nigeria actually has another exclusive .ng that is sold for as much as One Million Dollars ($1,000,000) each (I have not verified the exact cost) but to prove that it really exists here is Google’s version of the. ng url www.google.ng – clicking this redirects you to the main www.google.com site.
Marketing Takeaway: Don’t bother registering all your domain extensions, just register a few. In my case, I registered www.CFAgbata.com and CFAgbata.net (which I use for sending email newsletters) and then I registered a country specific domain name www.cfa.com.ng to protect the CFA brand locally. Both are redirected to this blog.
Notice I said some and not all. You can only register all if you are as a big as Google.
4. Avoid Domain Names with Hyphens
If you are a newbie to the internet space then heed my advice and warning: Avoid a domain name that has an hyphen.
Yes there are a couple of very successful websites that have domain names with hypens, which means there is an exception to this rule. Should that be a reason for you not to adhere to my advice? Well its up you but I encourage to obey.
Some Exceptions to this Rule
Yaro Starak is founder www.entrepreneurs-journey.com while this domain has an hypen, it is
a pretty old domain, which makes it an authority domain.
Also note that it has “entrepreneurs” a highly competitive and highly searched keyword as the first part of the domain name. He is an early bird to the internet and a lot worked in his favour. If you are starting out today, I doubt if you will be that lucky, except for those with a huge SEO budget.
Recently, I was appointed to the ICT committee of Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International Nigeria, a 60 years old fellowship of the Happiest People on Earth, when I was asked to review the website and come up with recommendations, I got confused because how am I supposed to tell my fellowship that the domain name www.fgbmfi-nigeria.org registered since 2003 should be changed because it has an hypen?
I am sure you know what I did……
Marketing Takeaway: Just save youself any unforseen stress and avoid domain names with hyphens. If you have an old domain name with an hypen, you can live with it as long as competition does not have the exact same one without an hyphen.
Someone might ask, what if my Small Business’s name is not keyword rich?
Well that is a brilliant question, I can’t imagine a small business looking for international clients to have a domain name as difficult as www.gbongbongidiyakpa.com irrespective if that is the business name or not.
Wisdom is profitable to direct – Ecclesiastes 10:10
This is a practical example of how we handled this sort of situation. Our company name is CFA Leverage, so we registered the domain name www.cfaleverage.com which is the natural thing to do.
But www.cfaleverage.com is not a keyword rich domain name, so we registered another domain www.seoexpertng.com that represents one of our major services which is SEO Services. We then created a permanent redirect such that if you click on www.cfaleverage.com it takes you to www.seoexpertng.com
I hope this helps and you learnt a thing or two? Please go on now and implement!
Feel free to share your experience if you have a website? How did you go about choosing a domain name?
Note: If this sounds too difficult for you then you should order our comprehensive Keyword Research, Domain Name Ideas and Title Tag SEO Services package. Prices start from as low as N10,000 ($60) and you can be sure of getting the best value for your money!
If you decide to use a phrase for your domain name (i.e.by combining keywords), please make sure that you have finally figured out what your domain name will be OFFLINE before checking its availability out online. This advice is based on the experience I had along with a colleague while trying to register a domain name for him.
During the domain name availability check-up, he felt using a synonym for the third keyword in his domain name would be better. At the end, we viewed that using the new keyword would defeat the the purpose of combining the three short keywords used in the domain name and we typed in the former keyword. There were website navigational hitches, thereafter,and having thought that we were okay with the reversion to the earlier third keyword, we went on with the domain name registration.
Oops! We, at the end, discovered that because of the hitches that happened, the reversion failed and so, we registered the “unwanted” third keyword with the domain name. Though, in the literal sense, we later felt that the registered domain name was still okay.However, in the real sense, we were not satisfied getting the “unwanted” domain name until another round of expenses were made to get us the earlier intended domain name.
To avoid repetition of expenses (time, money and efforts), please conclude with the keyword(s) in your domain name before you go online. Doing this, I think, will save you the chances of things unexpected such as ours.
To your online success.
Ha ha Joe, thanks for sharing this experience, I have lost some much registering domains and the reason is usually similar to and even on emotions. It is always paihful to start the process all over again espcially when money is involved.
Thanks Joe!