How to choose a domain name for a site

A correct choice of site’s domain name is more important than it can seem at first. It is a kind of “visiting card” of the resource, which can be identified and found by users in web.

Well-chosen domain name will positively affect the sales and search promotion of an e-commerce site as well as the popularity of a blog or a news portal. Let’s try to sort out the criteria it should fit.

What is domain name?

Domain name is a unique symbolic identifier of a site on the Internet. Simply put, this is the name by which we know the site and which we type into the address bar to get to it: google.com, wikipedia.org. Names can contain letters, numbers, and some other characters (for example, a hyphen). They were created for the convenience of users. As we know, computers on the Internet "recognize" each other by IP addresses (185.104.45.28), but such addresses are inconvenient for people and difficult to remember.

Parts of a domain name denote domains, the "regions" of the Internet, and they are separated by a dot. Each previous domain is the part of the next. For example, in the domain name office.example.com.ua:

• .ua is a first level domain, or TLD (Top Level Domain), also often referred to as a domain zone;
• .com.ua is a second level domain, or a narrower domain zone, which is part of the .ua zone;
• example.com.ua is a third level domain, or simply the site's name;
• office.example.com.ua is a fourth level domain. Such domains are often called subdomains, as these are, in fact, parts of example.com.ua site.

Approaches to the choice of site’s domain name

Two main approaches to choosing site’s domain can be identified.

Thematic

We choose the name according to the site topic, for example, online store, which sells fridges - holodilnik.com.ua or холодильник.укр. Earlier, it was thought that keywords in the address affect search ranking. Subsequently, Google decreased the influence of the name domain on ranking (you can listen to Matt Cutts, an ex-head of the Google’s web spam team, about this in the video below).

However, using a keyword in the domain name is still useful in terms of psychological factors: a user who is searching for sites on request “buy a house” will click on buyhouse.ua with a great probability.

Brand

Firstly, you should invent an original and memorable brand name, and after that choose a domain name according to it. This approach is profitable in terms of recognisability: you surely won’t be confused with your competitors. However, inventing a successful name is quite difficult.

What should a correct domain name be like?

1. Short. Try not to use titles, which consist of more than three words: they are sometimes hard to remember and to read. Typing a long title in the address bar is inconvenient. Ideally, it should be one or two small words (facebook.com, adme.ru, last.fm).
2. Understandable. Focusing on the foreign audience, it is better to choose titles in English rather than transliteration (books instead of knigi); check the spelling of English words. Both variants will fit the domestic audience, but try to avoid word combinations, which are difficult to read (e.g. ivanovwowa.org).
3. With a minimum of discrepancies. Try to use less letters, which can be written in Latin script in various ways, such as k, c or ck, h or kh, i or y (holodilnik.ua – kholodilnik.ua, holodilnick.ua, holodylnyk.ua). Ask your friends to write down the resulting word by ear – less mistakes is better.
4. Capacious. This principle refers to thematic names: they should describe what the site does shortly, but as accurate as possible.
5. Catchy and memorable. This paragraph is the most topical for brand names. Try to invent an original name, which the users will remember, while creating an own brand. You can use non-existent or little-known words: that is the way how Google, Bing and other famous companies’ names have been created.

How to choose a domain zone

When choosing the domain it is important to decide on the domain zone (the end of the site name, which stands after the point). Nowadays there are lots of them: you can find the whole list of them, for example, on the page of the official register of domain names.

All the domain zones can be divided into two groups:

1. international or generic – they include famous .com, .biz, .org, as well as relatively new and gaining popularity zones: .agency, .consulting, .media and others;
2. national or country-coded: .ua, .de, .kz etc.

What domain zone is better to choose in what case? Earlier lots of popular zones were clearly linked to the subjects: .com – commercial organizations, .org – noncommercial organizations, .net – companies that provide network services. However, these links go step by step to the past and you can locate a commercial site in .org zone and vice versa without much concern. For example, Google blogs have the ending .com.

Nevertheless, some domain zones still have strict thematic focus:

1. only educational institutions sites can be located in .edu zone. Initially this domain zone was intended for the USA universities, but nowadays the university site of any country can be registered in it. To do this, you should send necessary documents on university accreditation, contact information and get acquainted with the rules of servicing on the site of .edu domain registrar. There are also domains .edu.ua in Ukraine, which are registered by the company “Hostmaster”.
2. domain zone .gov is registered for the government agencies in many countries. For example, the rules of registration of a domain in Ukrainian .gov.ua zone can be found on the relevant page. The basis for the registration is an official letter – only when the registrar gets it you can fill in the appropriate form on the site, insert information about the organization and choose the domain name.

You shouldn’t be afraid of relatively new domain zones (.news, .store, .finance etc.): webmasters’ and optimizers’ experience shows that sites in this zones can be promoted as successfully as in the “classic” zones. Furthermore, a site with an appropriate to the topic zone (e.g. car portal with the ending .auto or .car) can increase the CTR in search results and will be remembered by the users. However, a key word in the end of the domain won’t bring you any benefits in search ranking: Google employers assure this.

Concerning the national domain zones, they should be used in such cases:

1. if the activity of your site will be linked to Ukraine, .com.ua domain will be perfect. Site can be located in the .ua zone only if you own a registered trade mark (during the domain registration the copies of the documents must be provided). The alternative is a relatively new domain zone .укр with names written in Cyrillic (you can read below about the Cyrillic domains);
2. if the site aims at the market of another country, you should choose an appropriate domain, for example, .de for Germany, .fr for France etc.;
3. if the site conducts its’ activity in a certain location, regional domain zones of the second level are relevant, for example, .kiev.ua for Kyiv, .kh.ua for Kharkiv, .dp.ua for Dnipro etc.
4. if the company doesn’t have any special location linking, use an international domain zone like .com or .biz.

Unlike the international, national and regional domains can have an additional influence on the site ranking in an appropriate regional search: a user from Kyiv will find a page .kiev.ua higher in Google results than similar .ru or .com with a great possibility, of course, if other factors are the same.

What to do, if all the domains are reserved?

1. Try another domain zone (new zones, increasing in number, will be especially relevant in such a case – look for the link to the domain register higher).
2. Use WHOIS services to know when the domain registration period of a current owner expires (if this information is in open access). If it is not so long, you can try to buy the domain just after it’s “drop” – usually it isn’t too expensive but works not always because good domain names can easily be prolonged.
3. Check if at the domain in which you are interested in a working site is located: sometimes good names are held by dealers and then the question would be only about the price. Sometimes, if you extremely need a certain domain, do not despair even if the owner actively uses it – try to contact the owner, negotiate about the purchase and convince him in the necessity of this domain for you. If you have enough financial resources, you can use the services of domain brokers, who will be intermediaries in the deal for a certain remuneration.
4. Try to use so called domain names generators (e.g. DomainTyper or NameStation) – resources, which select a set of possible combinations, based on the key words you entered. Additional functionality of these sites is an opportunity to check the busyness of a domain or to buy it immediately.That’s not a fact that the generator will give you a good domain name, but it can bump you into the right idea.

What else you should take into account while choosing a domain name

Choice of Cyrillic domains

Earlier we mentioned about Cyrillic domain names (they refer to so called IDN – Internationalized Domain Names, which support non-Latin alphabet letters). Relatively new domain zone .укр founded in 2013 gains popularity. However, lots of webmasters and optimizers unwillingly use such domains.

There are some concerns due to the fact that recently many services haven’t been supporting Cyrillic and promoting of such domains was very difficult. Nowadays thanks to introduction of the Punycode standard (translation of a national alphabet into the format “understandable” for Unicode encoding), this problem is largely solved, and Cyrillic domain promotion has become not more difficult than a traditional Latin. Despite all advantages of Punycode, it has a disadvantage – after inserting a Cyrillic URL to the site, which works with this standard, the link will look like this: http://xn--h1aehg.xn--p1ai/. Unaware users can be scared of this (link is not understandable and can be regarded as malicious, that will decrease its CTR and the number of transitions to the acceptor site).

The main advantage of IDN is their understandability to the users who do not speak English. However, it is worth to register domain in Cyrillic only when it is appropriate.

Multiple domains purchase

Perfect option is to buy all the domains on which the visitor can go by mistake (light.ua – lite.ua, lite.ua, etc.) and copies of your domain name in other popular zones (tsn.ua, tsn.com.ua, tsn.com). There are at least two reasons to purchase multiple domains:

1. random user errors: if a visitor typed site name or domain zone incorrectly, he/she can get away with nothing (here we go back to the fact that domain name should be understandable and readable in order to decrease the possibility of such mistakes);
2. unfair competition: if you don’t buy similar domains, it can be done by your competitors and after your site promotion some of your visitors can go to them for this reason.

Names, which create a meaningful phrase with the domain zone, should be treated with caution for the same reasons: they seem to be original, but instead of problem.net users often go to, for example, problemnet.com, where your competitors can be. Of course, multiple domains purchase is a quite expensive, but effective solution: it can increase site popularity in the future.

Free domains

On free domains of high levels, such as .konstruktor-sajtov.net.ua, serious projects shouldn’t be located: in fact, you don’t own this kind of domains and in the case of your site’s success it is quite difficult to defend your rights to own this resource.

On the other hand, if you buy domains from reliable registrars, you are provided with real rights to own a site. We advise you to register domain using only real passport data, desirably – company owner or manager: it will be easier to solve possible problems with registration, which may arise in the future.