Choosing the right Domain Name for your Business

Choosing the right domain name for your online business or website involves a few things to think about before deciding which name to go with.

Below we have some quick tips on helping you decide which domain name best suits your website.

TIP: If you are going to offer products or services through your website, who will be your audience? Potential customers within New Zealand or international?

For most websites doing business within New Zealand a .nz domain name will work fine. For websites deciding to expand in the future a .com would be a better choice as an official commercial international business. The reason .com can also be a better choice, is that it is an international domain name extension which can rank higher in search engines and is accepted by more general searches and online directories. A .nz domain can restrict the inclusion of your website to these various online services from around the world.

TIP: If you already have a registered Limited company name, for your customers to find you better online and to spread the name within the market sector you are working in, if possible it is best to use your companies name as your official domain name as well.

For example:

Your business name may be: Fish Fingers Limited.

Best choice domain name would be: www.fishfingers.co.nz or www.fishfingers.com

Try not to use www.fishfingersltd.co.nz/.com or www.fisherfingerslimited.co.nz/.com as having the Limited isn’t necessary, it adds no additional value or rank to your website, simply makes it longer and harder for your customers to remember.

If the desired domain name is already taken, you may need to decide on a work around. Based on the above example the following names may work, however some have as indicated a downside attached to them, which would also be applicable to other names.

1. www.fish-fingers.co.nz or www.fish-fingers.com : With this choice you would still have the ability to use your business title, however this can cause some customers visiting the wrong website by forgetting to add the “-” with the name.
2. You can base the domain name on a main product or service provided. In this cause www.fishproducts.co.nz or www.fishproducts.com : This option would tell potential customers before even visiting your website, that you offer fish products and doesn’t confuse them as to what your business/website provides.
3. If going with another domain name, for example based on a product or service provided by the business : Make sure that this is an easy to remember name, descriptive, not to long and made up of no more then 2 words.

TIP: Never use your businesses phone number or mobile number as a domain name. This doesn’t give your customers any meaning when viewing the domain name in search results,  it also doesn’t tell them where this number belongs to, adds no descriptive or search engine rank value and cannot be used if the number changes.

When you have found the right domain name, it is important to make sure that this is registered through an authorised registrar to prevent any fraud, ensure the safety in your personal information and having full rights to the registered name.  For a list of authorised .nz registrars you can visit the New Zealand Domain Name Commission at www.dnc.org.nz.

I hope that this article can help you to choose the right domain name.

This article was written by: Mike Stevens

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010 at 6:49 pm and is filed under Business, Internet, Web Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.