With millions of domain names now registered, and thousands of new ones being acquired daily, it’s now more important than ever to invest more time, money, and research in the domain name decision process.
Just like your house or business has a physical address, your online business and website will have one as well — except it will be in the form of a domain name.
Throw in the fact that once a domain name is registered, it’s unlikely to ever become available again, and that every website’s domain name is completely unique, this also solidifies the important of not only choosing a great name for your brand or site, but also one that you will be happy with for the lifetime of your site.
Today we are going to highlight seven different factors every individual, entrepreneurs, brand or business must consider before acquiring their next domain name.
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Stick with a .Com, .Net, or a .Org
The most valuable and memorable domain names in the world today at .com, .net, and .org. These are also the domain names that you are going to want to stick with as well. To see if any of these variations are available, run a quick domain name search and examine what the results look like.
In most case, any generic domain names with these TLDs will likely already be taken. When that is the case, be sure to run through each of the key data points and alternative options below.
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Short, Simple and Easy to Remember and Spell
When picking a domain name for your site and brand, you might think there are a world of options to choose from — but you also want to make sure it’s something that is easy to spell, remember, and good for your brand in the process.
With this in mind, feel free to get creative with your brand name and domain, but don’t go too crazy. Also, stay away from using dashes and numbers in your domain name. There are also plenty of domain name tools and best practices on this blog that everyone should consider when going through the name search process.
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Don’t Get Suckered into Buying a Weird TLD
Going back to point number one, the best options for your domain name are going to be .com, .net, or .org. However, there have been plenty of new domain extensions that have come out over the past decade. These were created to provide more opportunities for site owners, but they never really caught on. If you go with any of these outside options, you might confuse your audience and probably won’t look very professional in the process.
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Register Your Personal Name if it’s Available
Just like everyone has a street address for their home, everyone also has a personal name. If you haven’t registered your personal name as a domain name yet, do so immediately! There are likely many other people in the world that share the same name as you, and if you aren’t the first person to register it as a domain name, you are likely to miss out.
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Consider Your Options with a Premium Domain Name
As mentioned earlier, millions of domain names are already registered, but this doesn’t mean they are gone for good. Sometimes domain names are purchased for their value and are up for resale. If there isn’t a full website or company behind a domain name that you are interested in, you might find that it is for sale or that the domain owner could be contacted for a potential sale.
Some premium (generic/one-word) domains are still selling for upwards of a million dollars. Sleeping.com and snoring.com just recently sold for $1 million!
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Domain Expiration Services are Great, But Don’t Wait Forever
Another option to consider if you dream domain is already taken, is to use a domain name expiration service and see if the site owner forget to renew the domain. This rarely happens, but sometimes it does. Best of all, if this does happen, you might be able to secure the domain name from a name drop provider for around $100.
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Explore Domain Auction Marketplace and Brokers for New Domains
A last resort for coming up with a unique and valuable domain name for your site or brand, is to use an online domain auction marketplace like Flippa.com. You could also hire a domain broker to see if they can acquire an already registered domain for you as well. You might not come across the perfect domain name on domain auction sites, but you also never know what you might find going up for sale!
Follow these tips and set your online brand off in the right direction!
Domain names are everything. Just look at some of the top businesses and brands in the world today and what they’ve been able to do with their branding and domain name usage.
Also, look at names like Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Hubspot, and many others. All of these names meant nothing before they were big websites and brands.
This should be a constant reminder of not just how important the domain name for your brand will be, but also that you can come up with something completely original and also find great branding success as well.