Choosing a domain name - Overview
Definition: A web address is referred to as a domain name
Think before you rush out to register the first domain name that you come up with! You have a number of choices to think about. As well as simply choosing a name that matches your business name you should also consider whether it might be better to register a domain that describes what you do or the area of work your business is involved in.
For example if you ran an internet marketing company called "smith consulting" you might consider "www.smith-consulting.co.uk" or alternatively an address describing what you do e.g. "www.internet-marketing.co.uk".
If your company or charity is already established and you have a reasonable number of customers or supporters that already know about you its likely that people may want to search for you by name. This may involve either entering a search for your company in a search engine such as google OR people may guess at your web address based upon your name and simply type it into their browsers address bar. In this scenario it may well be better to opt for a domain that mirrors your company or charity name - but think about your longer term plans also.
If you are a new organisation, are launching an additional site or have been around for a while but not many people know about you it may well be worth considering a name that describes your product, service or the area that you work in. Having words in your web address that describe your business activities makes it a little more likely that people doing a search for e.g. the products you offer will find you. If you do opt for this approach do some research to find out what the best keywords to use are. If you pick too obscure a term then the chances are that not many people may actually use that term to conduct searches. If too general then you may find that there are so many competing sites using similar terms that its hard for you to stand out. This will be covered in greater depth in an additional post.
