Domain names are the addresses of your website on the Internet, having a good domain name can mean the difference between a busy, popular site and one that is not so well know or as visible in search results.
Your domain name will follow the format:
www.yourdomainname.com
Here is what each part of the domain name means:
WWW – this means World Wide Web and indicates that this is a website, you cannot change this.
YOURDOMAINNAME – this is the address of your website and will often include a descriptive element to let people know what your website is about.
COM – these were previously used as indicators of where the website is hosted i.e. .com is USA (or worldwide) and .co.uk would indicate your site is based in the UK. This is now not regarded as a indicator of location as there are many options you can choose irrelevant of location i.e. .info, .biz, .eu.
When choosing a domain name you need to decide on a few things:
Availability
There are a limited number of possible domain names and plenty of these are already in use. You cannot use the same domain name as any other website and companies called domain registrars manage this. They will often have a search bar where you can input the name of a website you are considering registering, be warned though if you have a great idea for a domain name and you constantly check if it is still available with a domain registrar, others will be able to see a lot of queries relating to your domain name and, knowing that someone wants that domain name, they may register it before you. Subsequently they may try and sell it back to you at a much higher price. Our advise would be not to set your heart on one particular domain name but rather work out what you want your domain name to tell people and then look at lots of available options when you decide to have your website built and not before.
Content and competition
You must also decide what your domain name should contain, for example if you wanted a website for a window cleaning business you could spend a lot of money and get a domain name like www.windowcleaner.com, this would get excellent traffic to your site but that traffic would not be targeted to your needs, for example people in America may well find your site but if you only work in a 5 mile radius of London then that is not much use. Alternatively you could go for a name like www.camden-window-cleaners.co.uk, this is much more targeted and as such there will be less competition for visitors searching for ‘window cleaning camden’, or similar. Again you could choose to go for something like www.fredtheladderman.co.uk but this does not include any useful, descriptive, words and quite difficult to read and remember. Our advise would be to think like your target audience, what do they need from your site? what are they searching for to find you? If your site has wide and general interest, try and find a niche that will allow you to stand out.
Com or Co.uk?
Good question! This, again, will depend on what you offer and how you would like to be seen by your audience. For commercial sites having the slightly more expensive .com suffix will suggest that your business is global, if not in practise then in appearance anyway. Equally some domains will be more suited to a .co.uk if they wish to express to their audience that they are based in the UK. Successful sites which may have competitors looking to impersonate their site will want to have all the available suffixes for their domain name (i.e. yourdomain.com & yourdomain.co.uk & yourdomain.biz…)
Whatever your requirements we will be happy to help you choose and purchase the right domain name for your purposes.