Your website’s domain name is your business’ identity online. Domain name can make or break your business online – it can considerably impact your website’s traffic and brand recall online.

1. Choosing a Domain Name for
Your Business Website

2. Your website’s domain name is your business’ identity
online. Domain name can make or break your business
online – it can considerably impact your website’s
traffic and brand recall online.

3. However, picking the right domain name is a daunting
task, because there are hundreds of millions of websites on
the World Wide Web. According to the latest Domain
Name Industry Brief published by Verisign, the base of
registered domain names has increased by 5 million in the
first quarter of 2014, bringing the total to 276 million
domain names registered worldwide. Creating a domain
name that stands out from the crowd, the one that is search
engine friendly while protecting your brand is not an easy
job.

4. To help you out, we have come up with a list of
factors that you need to keep in mind when
choosing a domain name for your business website.
Hope this helps!

5. Choose a unique domain name closer to your
business name
See to it that the domain name is closer to the actual
name of your business. Your audience are more likely to
remember your brand/business and thus branded
domains help in word of mouth marketing.

6. According to Nielsen’s ‘Trust In Advertising’ report
2013, branded websites are the second most trusted
form of advertising. Also, branded domains earn
credibility. For example, Infinitywebmonitor.com looks
more credible than cheapwebmonitoringservices.com.

7. One more important thing you need to remember here
is not to take shortcuts to get traffic by creating a
domain name that is close to your competitor or a
popular site – it can be disastrous. Don’t make a
mistake of picking up an already established website
and doing minor alterations – making it plural, adding
hyphens or misspelling it.

8. Keep it as short and meaningful as possible
If you choose a domain name that is long and complex,
your customers are likely to mistype it or misspell it. A
good rule of thumb is to make sure your domain name is
short, simple; easy to remember, type and pronounce.
More importantly, it should be relevant to what you do
and to your core business. The shorter and meaningful
your domain name is, the easier it will be for your
prospective customers to type it and remember it.

9. Choose extensions carefully
Top level domains (TLDs), the last segment of the
domain name, are the most valuable extensions when
choosing a domain name. There are a number of
domain name extensions (.com, .net, .org, .ca, .edu,
.gov, .info, .biz) to choose from, but you have to be
careful while choosing one. Choose extensions
depending upon the nature of your business and your
audience.

10. .com is one of the popular and common extensions
used generally by commercial websites. Here are the
other extensions and some important notes on how
they are used.
.co : generally used for company and commerce
.org : non-profits and non-commercial organizations
.net : .net is used for technical, IT sites
.info : for informational sites
.biz : business or commercial site

11. If you are serving a specific country, it is better to go for
a country-specific domain such as ‘.ca’ for Canada. You
will have better chances of ranking in search engines.
For example, websites with .ca rank better in google.ca
or bing.ca.

12. Internet users generally support businesses operating
from their country. For example, a research by
Canadian Internet Registration authority (CIRA) shows
that .ca makes a good choice for businesses that wish to
have an online presence as more than 70 per cent of
online Canadians say that they prefer to support
Canadian businesses, whenever possible.

13. Domain privacy
Domain privacy is a useful feature. Many people would
not like to share their identity data publicly. For such
people, domain privacy feature is a boon. You can avail
this feature from your domain registrar.
Under domain privacy, the webhost will make sure that
the client's identity data such address, etc. are not
revealed.

14. How it works
When you use this feature, your "whois" domain
information is replaced with the domain privacy
message of the registrar and is set such that your
identity data are not accessible to others on the Web.
Picking the right domain name for your business is the
first step towards building a successful online
campaign. Therefore, make the right choice and choose
the right domain name for your business.

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