7 qualities of a good domain name for your website

Any marketing professional will tell you the importance of the “P of Place“in your business. Your business premise tells a lot to your present customers as well as your would-be-customers. That is why businesses invest a lot of money and time in getting a vantage location for their business. It works much the same way online. Your website is your "premise" on the internet. It’s your virtual store - and your domain is your virtual address. So you want to make sure your domain meets all the qualities of a good domain name if you are to remain on the cutting edge of your niche. Let’s look at some of the characteristics that make a good domain name for a website

1. Too long is too bad

Long domain names are not good. Even if you have a very long business name, it doesn’t mean you should get a very lengthy domain name. For example, if you name your company “From New York to Maasai Mara Safaris”, it would be a bad idea to register a domain like fromnewyorktomaasaimarasafaris.com. It is advisable to try to keep your domain shorter than twenty characters long. The lesser the characters the better it will be for you and for your visitors. Short URLs are easier to remember. That means that a website visitor will easily memorize your short domain name and he/she can easily visit your website or blog by just typing the domain name from memory. In addition to this, it is easier to share short domain names on social networks and instant messaging systems. Did you notice twitter automatically shortens all long URLs you tweet?

2. Descriptive is good

It is estimated that at least seventy percent of your site's visitors will land there from Google, Bing, yahoo or other major search engines. It is therefore good practice to have a domain name that is descriptive of your products or your business. That way, new visitors will already have a rough idea what your services are before they click on the link to your website. There are many reasons why websites get a very high bounce rate. One of them is of course lack of quality content but misleading domains is another major reason. For instance, if your domain has the name safaris in it and someone clicks on it and sees no information about safaris, chances are the visitor will close the tab immediately. It’s always good to remember that you not only want to attract but also to retain new customers. If you see the domain name bluehost.com, you might easily guess that the company provides web hosting services right? They have very descriptive domain. Maybe that is one of the reasons WordPress recommends it to bloggers.

3. Simple to spell

A good domain name should be easy to spell. Imagine if you are in a social gathering and someone asks you, “What do you do?”
“Am a blogger.” Comes your reply. Then of course you will add, “”check out my blog at….”
Get the picture? If you have a simple to spell domain name, the contact you have made will not need to ask you three times for you to repeat the domain name. I am not sure about other languages but English has a lot of ambiguities. So you want to ensure the domain name you choose avoids ambiguity as much as is practically possible. For instance, if you told someone that your domain is firsttrack.com, chances are that he/she will end up typing fasttrack.com or even firstrack.com. Need I even mention that that is all it takes to lose a potential client?

4. No hyphens

Many times, people want to register a domain but unfortunately, they find it has already been registered. So they resort to modifying the domain by a hyphen. For example, maybe you wanted firsttrack.com then discovered it has been taken so you settle for first-track.com. Bad idea. The hyphen may work well with the search engines but it may not work very well with the human visitors. I still remember theory XYZ that I learnt in a management class. It said something like “employees are naturally lazy and will not perform unless they are forced to…” The theory may not be true for all employees but it certainly is true for internet users. Nobody wants to waste time typing hyphens in the URL. It’s a lot of worker to press shift and dash at the same time.

5. No numbers

When was the last time you typed a URL that had a number? Chances are you have never. And if you have, chances are you can’t remember when that was. The reason is domains with numbers are not popular. And with good reason too. People will often translate the number into their word equivalent. For instance, if your domain was 1sttrack.com, visitors will often type firsttrack.com. In other words, if you want to have a good domain name, then you want to avoid having numbers in the website name - unless it is absolutely necessary, or unless you are sure it will not bring confusion. A good example of a domain with a number that will seldom cause confusion is hi5.com.

6. Popular extension

There is a reason why most of the .com domain names you try have already been taken. It’s a popular extension. I have many times entered a business name in the URL with a .com to find their website and many times it has worked. Its a game i enjoy playing when am bored- to see if i can locate websites without Google.  Your customers may not think its a game. To them, time is of essence and they don't want to spend too much time trying to figure out what your domain name is. In addition to this, your site's visitors will pay attention to your domain name/ business  name and not much attention to your extension. That means that the next time they visit, they will probably enter yourbusniessname.com in the browser - even if your domain extension was not .com. That is why I think registering a .com domain for your website or blog is a good idea.

7. Relevant extension

Even though I have suggested that .com is the best extension, i must mention that it doesn’t apply to all situations. .com means the website is for commercial purposes. So if you are putting up a website that is not for commercial purposes, then a good domain extension would be .org. There are other extensions that will be interpreted by the different visitors differently. For more details on this, refer to my hub on How to choose a domain name for your website or blog