If you want to build a website for your business or to start your own blog or portfolio website you need a domain name and hosting. Keep reading to find out what is a domain name and how to select and register one.
What is a Domain Name?
If you are just starting with online marketing, you may come across that you need to choose a domain name to build your website. You might not familiar with the term domain name want to know what is a domain name? and how does it work?
A domain name is the unique address of your website on the internet. If you consider your website as a house then the domain name is the address for that house. If anyone wants to visit your website they can type your domain name in the address bar and find your website.
Examples of domain names: google.com, aarubimedia.com, amazon.com, wordpress.org, etc.
I don’t go into the technical details of a domain name or how does it work here. For now, just think the domain name is a unique address for your website.
What do you need to consider when you choose your domain name?
If you can’t decide what is your blog is about, the easiest and more flexible way to choose your domain name is using your name as your website domain name. It will allow you to change your niche in the future or you can cover more than one niches in one blog.
Cosider the following when you chose your domain name:
- Decide what are you going to write about in your blog – What niche
- Decide whether you are going to build a brand around your niche in future
- Choose a .com domain name, it is still the most credible top-level domain
- Make sure it is shorter and easy to remember
- If you know your niche include keywords that related to your niche
- Do not use numbers, hyphens, or abbreviations like yr instead of your
- Don’t pick the trademarked name
- Use domain name generators to find a suitable domain name
1. Decide Your Niche
It is better to decide your niche before you choose your domain as it is easy to come up with ideas. But as a beginner, it is not easy to decide your niche unless you have a unique skill or passion that you want to write about.
If you can’t decide your niche then start with a domain name that is not niche-related. It can be your name, like neilpatel.com, johnchow.com, something with your name, like paulblog.com, learnwithpaul.com, or a generic name like AarubiMedia.com.
2. Brandable Domain Name
Brandable domain names are mostly referred to the domain names that don’t have any keyword or specific meaning. One good example is fiverr.com, Fiverr does not mean anything but that related to what the website is about, you can get people to do specific things like creating a logo for you for $5.
If you want to register a brandable domain name it should be unique, memorable, relevant, credible and user friendly.
3. Why You Should Choose a .com Domain Name?
Unlike before we have a vast choice of top level domain today, from .com, .org, .net and country specific like .fr, .uk, to .shop, .blog.
Still “.com” is the most used and credible domain extension. When people see an unfamiliar extension, they might not trust your website and leave your website.
When it comes to website or domain name people are used to .com and they automatically type .com at the end without thinking. Even to make it worse most mobile keyboards have .com. Stick with .com if you can.
4. Short and easy to remember
If you want people to remember your website chose a domain that shorter and easy to remember.
Try to limit the maximum number of words in your domain to four if it makes sense.
It will increase the chance of people revisiting your website. Also, it will be easy for them to refer your website to someone.
5.Include your Niche-related keyword in your domain
If your domain name has niche-related keywords it may increase credibility and the chance of ranking in google search.
Only use the keyword in your domain if you know what niche your blog is going to be about. It might not be suitable if you change your niche in the future. For example, if you choose techvillage.com and if you want to write about cooking in the future it will not suitable.
6. Do not use numbers, hyphens or abbreviation like yr instead of your
Numbers in your domain name will be confusing, If your domain name cloths4you.com someone may type it as clothfouryou.com or clothsforyou.com. Hyphen and underscore are hard to remember. Abbreviations like yr instead of your will lead to misspelling.
7. Don’t pick the trademarked names as your domain
Don’t use any trademarked name as your domain name or even in your domain name. Ex: iLoveApple.com.
You can do a search on the USPTO website to find the trademarked name.
http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=tess&state=4810:yda5rl.1.1
8. Use domain name generators to find a suitable domain name
Find a good domain name with your keyword using a domain name generator such as Nameboy, Domain wheel.
Choose a list of domain names that you like.
Now it’s time for an availability check.
Use a domain register like name cheap.com to check if .com is available to register.
don’t register yet I will show you how you can get the domain name free.
The next step is registering your hosting.
We recommend Hostgator for hosting. Click here to claim your free domain name and up to A 60% discount with your hosting.
Visit here to learn how you can register your hosting build your website with WordPress.
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