Internet growth has limited the number of available high-quality domain names. Getting one that is evergreen is not an easy task and requires you to be innovative, get inside your audience head, and produce a domain name that can stand the test of time.
When searching for such a domain name keep in mind these following steps:
- Brandability
- Originality
- Generic keywords
- Keep it short
- Social media availability
- Search-related
- Readability
- Pronunciation
- Domain extension choice
- No legal issues
Brandability
Depending on where there you are aiming to use the chosen domain name to promote a service, business or a product, it must be consistent with branding. Matching branding will help your customers find it online through a search engine or by typing in their browser address bar. Bad branding will lead to traffic and conversion loss. Good branding is unique, meaningful, catchy and to the point.
Originality
Having an original domain name will help your customers recognize your domain name among the competition. On the other hand, a domain name that is similar to website competing with yours can miss-lead your customers to a said competitor site. Make sure your domain name is original and well-branded.
Generic Keywords
SEO wise, having a keyword in your domain name is not as relevant as it once was. Search engines now know what is your website about. However, from visitor point-of-view, it is a good thing to have a generic keyword as a domain name or partially as internet users still quite often type generic keywords into search engines.
Keep it short
Mostly because .COM namespace has become so much saturated, people are inclined to register very long domain names just so they can still have the .COM domain extension. Long domain names are difficult to remember. Users can make an error typing and you may lose traffic. Conveying a long domain name vocally to another user is another caveat. Do not go for a long domain name, – make it simpler and shorter.
Social media availability
Before you definitely register a domain name, make sure the same is available with social media platforms. Again, for the sake of identifying a brand with its online presence, you should want to match social media branding with your domain name. In a rare case, you might not want to produce a social media presence for your domain name, but you should get hold of the possible profiles or pages to prevent your competition from taking them.
Search-related
A simple Google search for your chosen domain name can give a lot of information. Use it to check what kind of search rank your brand name has in different search engines. How does it relate to your business niche or industry? Google AdWords can be an additional tool for preview and diagnose.
Readability
Strong domain name is easy to read, just like a strong brand. When it is easy to read, it is also easy to spell and remember. Totally avoid hyphens and numbers as they can lead to confusion with typing and overall brandability. You do not want to lose customers because you had number 8 in your domain name while customers search typing “eight”.
Pronunciation
A domain name is no good if your customers have a hard time saying it. Vocal transfer of a domain name between your customers is very important because it can bring additional quality leads. More so, different regions may vary in how they would pronounce your domain name and you will have to be aware of this with your target audience.
Domain extension choice
Every single marketing agency will state that .COM domain name is the best for any kind of business or company. From an SEO perspective, we can agree that all top-level domains have the same ranking strength and website content is the key to better ranking more than the domain name. From internet user perspective, people still default to .COM when they do not remember the domain extension, so yes it may be the most desirable. However, because of the .COM namespace saturation it just may not be possible to get that domain name with your branding choice. This is not a breaking issue, other TLDs are still good and you actually can choose a regional country code top-level domain for your target audience, which may even provide some benefit in local search ranking over gTLD extension. It is a known fact that ccTLD are favored by Google in a local search.
No legal issues
Make sure your chosen domain name is not a registered trademark. Trademark infringement will most likely result in your loss of the domain name ownership, and in a worst case scenario, you may have to pay a fine. Additionally, you may want to make a trademark of the domain name for your company. This would protect you from competitors using that name against your company.
Follow these steps and you are bound to get an evergreen domain name for your company.