Choosing a domain name

What actually matters

That it matches your business name, so somebody who heard of you can find you. That it survives being said aloud over a bad phone line. And that it is short enough to fit on signage without wrapping.

Those three cover almost all of the real-world use of a domain. Everything else is a preference, and most of the advice online is about a search advantage that no longer exists.

Test it by reading it to somebody and asking them to write it down. Hyphens, plurals and words that can be spelled two ways all fail that test immediately.

Keyword domains are not the advantage they were

An address built from a service and a town used to help. That effect has been reduced for years, and a generic keyword address now often reads as less credible than a real business name.

It also constrains you. A domain naming one service and one town is awkward the moment you add a second of either, and businesses grow more often than they plan to.

Where a descriptive address genuinely fits the business name, it is fine. Where it is chosen instead of the business name, it is usually a mistake you live with for years.

Extensions and alternatives

The common commercial extension is still the default expectation, and people type it by habit whatever you print. If it is available for your name, take it.

Where it is not, a newer extension is acceptable and increasingly ordinary. What is not acceptable is a near-miss of somebody else's name, which sends your customers to them.

Check for trademark conflicts before registering anything. Choosing a name that somebody else has rights to is an expensive discovery to make after printing. Nothing here is legal advice.

What to check before registering

The list below takes ten minutes and prevents the decisions people regret. The first item is the one most often skipped and the most expensive to fix.

• That it is registered in the business name, not a personal one
• That you control the registrar account and the billing
• That it reads correctly when said aloud
• That it has no hyphens or ambiguous spellings
• That the matching social handles are broadly available
• That it does not conflict with an existing trademark
• That renewal is set up and the contact address is monitored

Ownership, which matters most

A domain registered by a helpful relative, a first web designer or an agency is the single most common problem we see. Recovering one requires the registered holder to act.

Register it yourself, in the business name, on a business card, with a contact address somebody checks. Our page on one business, one domain covers why the address is the asset.

Set it to renew automatically and make sure the reminder goes somewhere monitored. Domains lapse through an unread email far more often than through any deliberate decision.

Buying more than one

Registering common misspellings is reasonable and cheap. Register them, point them at the main address with a permanent redirect, and never publish them anywhere.

What does not work is running two live sites on two domains. Our page on duplicate content covers why, and it splits whatever either address would have earned.

Pick one address, use it everywhere, and let the others point at it, so a search engine or an answer engine only ever has one version of you to learn. Consistency is worth more than coverage here by a considerable margin.

Changing one later

It is possible and it costs. Every link pointing at the old address has to be redirected, every listing corrected, and search engines have to relearn the association.

Our page on rebranding covers the process. The summary is that it works, it takes months to settle, and it is worth avoiding by choosing carefully now.

Keep the old domain for years afterward if you do move. Letting it lapse hands whatever it accumulated to whoever registers it next.