How to Select the Perfect Domain Name for SEO?

The domain name is the most important thing for your online presence, whether a brand, business, blog, or website. If you choose the wrong domain name, you will have to spend a lot more on advertising and SEO than you need to with the right domain name.

How to Select the Perfect Domain Name?

Before purchasing the domain name, you must check all  of the following points:

1. Always Select .com Domain if Available

This is the most important thing to look for while selecting the domain name. It doesn’t matter if you are registering the domain for hosting a website, blog, or local business; your priority must be to get a .com domain if the name matches your primary requirement in the domain name.

2. Choose Between Brand or Keyword Based or Hybrid Domain Name

GoDaddy.com & BigRock.com are examples of brands, Register.com & Name.com are keyword-based domains, and HostGator.com & NameCheap.com  are hybrid domains in the domain registrar business. A brand name need not contain any keyword or be a meaningful word but must be small, easy to remember and spell. If possible, try to get a single-word brand name like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. The name selection to be a brand name is a good idea if you are willing to spend on branding. It is easy to remember brand names associated with their business when we visit their websites a few times. But what about acquiring a new user? A new user would find it rather hard to associate GoDaddy and BigRock with domain registration. Still, the name Register.com and Name.com give the users a hint that the website must be related to domain registration. Hence new users click on such results in search engines, and the website enjoys higher CTR. If both are not an option, then go for a hybrid domain. You can combine a keyword and brand name to make the domain name. This type of domain enjoys both the benefits of brand and keyword but is not as effective as them. An excellent hybrid domain is two words and minor in length.  

3. The domain should be Small in Length.

The smaller the domain is higher its worth and domain authority. Any .com domain of a character length of 4 characters or less is declared a premium domain by the domain registrars. Small domains are easy to remember and quick to type, which gives lots of direct returning visitors. Hence small domain names are used for branding these days. I recommend domain names up to 8 characters long as long as it is a .com domain. For other domain extensions, six characters are long enough. m.com, t.co, FB.me, Mi.com, JIO.com, 9GAG.com, etc., are famous examples of small domain names.

4. Domain should be Easily Spellable.

If you want your website to grow from word of mouth like it did with Facebook, you should select a spellable domain. It would be best to avoid words generally misspelled by the people in your domain name. A popular domain name that is misspelled is Delicious.com which is often misspelled as Delecious.com. Although most of the visitors are returned to Delicious via Google’s autocorrect and suggestions for popular keywords and domains, you would lose a lot of direct visitors if your domain name contains generally misspelled words.

5. The domain should NOT contain Numbers, Hyphens, Articles, Gerunds, etc.

Do you know that FaceBook.com was TheFaceBook.com before Sean Parker suggested Mark Zuckerberg “remove the The“? People may think that it doesn’t matter; TheFaceBook.com would still be the #1 social network if they hadn’t removed the ‘The,’ and maybe they could be right. But as an expert, I appreciate the step, and if you have some experience in this field, you would too. Aside from articles (a, an & the), omit hyphens (–), numbers (0 – 9), and gerunds (to & for) in the domain. A domain for a transport company that transports goods from India to the USA should be IndiaUSA.com instead of India-USA.com or IndiaToTheUSA.com, or India2USA.com.

Before purchasing a domain name, keep these points in mind, and I guarantee your domain will perform better than it would have if you had not considered them.