Choosing the right Domain Name

A domain name is the address Internet Users will type in to navigate to your website. For example toolkitsupport.uk is the domain for this website.

Choosing the right domain name is crucial and does require some thought. It's the core of your online presence and identity on the web. You want to choose something that's easy to remember, is short enough to have an email address on but also includes search keywords if possible.

Below we've outlined our advice for when it comes to choosing a domain.

The main body

The biggest choice you'll have to make is what you'd like the main part of your Domain Name to be. We recommend considering these 3 areas:

Length - SEO - Memorable .

Length

Keep your domain as short as possible. Remember, you may have email addresses setup on your domain.

SEO

Try to include a search term in your domain. Every search term on your website will help.

Memorable

Keep your domain name memorable. If people want to check out your website later, they need to remember the address.

The Domain Extension

When we say the Domain Extension, we mean the suffix or part at the end. For example:

.co.uk - .com - .org etc.

.co.uk

.co.uk implies that your a UK trading business

.com

.com implies that you're an American company, or you trade worldwide.

.org

.org is used for non-profit organisations, like charities or fundraiser websites. .org.uk is the same, but implies that you're UK based.

The Case Studies

Lets say your company is a Car Washing business in Southampton called 'Will's Washing'. So taking all of the above into account, what should your domain be?

You may want to register willswashing.co.uk. This is a perfect lenth , but it doesn't contain any search terms to help your SEO.

To help SEO, you could register willscarwashingsouthampton.co.uk, but this is quite long and may not be easy to remember . Also, if you had an email address on this domain, it'd be a real mouthful. info@willscarwashingsouthampton.co.uk! .

Taking everything into account, willswashingsouthampton.co.uk might be the domain you want to go for!

Now, imagine you're a Solar Panel provider with factories and offices in the UK and the US, called 'Sun Power Global'. So taking all of the above into account, what should your domain be?

You may want to register sunpowerglobal.co.uk. This is a perfect lenth , but it's using the country-code extension of .co.uk. Remember, you trade in the US and in the UK.

As such, you should probably register a .com domain name.

sunpowerglobal.com would be a good domain to use. It's a good lenth, it contains your company name and the extension is correct based on your business location.

The only thing it doesn't cater for is SEO, as no search terms are included. This can be easily made up for with good on-site SEO though.