How to choose your domain name

How to choose your domain name

Choosing a domain name is important, and shouldn’t be taken lightly. Ideally, your domain name should be chosen only after you have done thorough keyword research. That way you can have identified your opportunity keywords and know which ones you are most likely to rank for.

The domain name is important partly because it will appear in every URL you get indexed in Google. For that reason, it will help to use a term which you know your target audience might use to search you by. If you have a well-known brand name then of course it must be used in the URL, but if you are a start-up, and your brand isn’t known yet, then choosing your domain gives you an opportunity to stake your claim and gain competitive advantage over those who have been around longer than you.

An example of a well chosen domain name is eventcourse.com. This is the trading name of Ashdown Academy online. It is an academic company which was established to provide tutoring and training towards a post graduate and a diploma certificate. The keyword research we conducted for Ashdown Academy revealed 131 opportunity keywords. 40 of them contained ‘event’ and ‘course’ in them, and half of those had more than 1,000 searches per month. (see table below). Event Course stood out as a good brand name and URL for their new company therefore. It is short and easy to remember. It is difficult to miss-spell and it incorporates the two words most commonly used in search terms by its target audience.

As a keyword itself, event course gets over sixty thousand searches per month. But, not surprisingly, it has over a million competing pages. In itself it doesn’t make it onto the opportunity keyword list therefore, and yet within six months of launch, eventcourse.com now ranks top in Google for that search term – ‘event course’ – from over 950 million indexed pages.

Without keyword research, there are numerous other domains which might have been chosen. Some of them might have had a good ‘ring’ to them, and might even be memorable, but none can have performed as well as eventcourse.com.

Need help choosing a domain name?

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