How to Choose the Best Domain Name (Expert Tips)

Need help finding a domain name that matches your website idea?

Often new website owners rush to choose a domain name for their business only to realize that they have made the wrong choice. While switching domains later is technically possible, the whole process can be a hassle and could potentially affect your SEO and brand recognition.

That’s why choosing the RIGHT domain name now is crucial for your online success.

While our free domain name generator tool will help you find a lot of good domain name ideas, it can also be quite overwhelming for new users to see so many choices.

So we have created a 7-step guide to share our expertise and help you easily choose the best domain name.

1. Choose a domain extension

.com is the most widely used domain extension globally. People instinctively expect websites to have a .com extension, making it easier for users to remember and find your website. It’s the reason why most smartphone keyboards have a built-in .com button.

There are also other popular generic top-level domains to consider. These include the net , org , biz , and info domains.

Depending on your niche, you could also look at custom extensions like .photography, .media, or .shop. These extensions help incorporate keywords relevant to your niche, potentially improving search discoverability.

Ultimately, they can help you build a stronger online presence and attract more targeted traffic to your site. With a wide range of options available, such as .lawyer, .bet, .rentals, .vote, .blog or .bio, the possibilities are endless.

If you’re catering to a local audience, then you could consider geographic domain extensions like .co.uk, .us, .nz, and .de that help localize your SEO.

2. Make it easy to pronounce and spell

One of the reasons for lost traffic is typos. When choosing a new domain name, it’s extremely important that your website name is easy to spell and pronounce.

So for instance, you might want to spell your website bumblebee.com as bumbleb.com. Or let’s take another example of spelling getcurious.com as getcureeyos.com.

Domains like this can be so confusing for users as they could be mispronounced and misspelled. It’s also harder to remember and type.

If done right though, it could give your brand a unique edge. Tumblr.com is a great example of this.

Always keep your users in mind and see if the domain name is easy for them to remember and spell.

A tip we like to keep in mind is if you’re ever in a public place without a business card, your website and social media handles need to be easy to remember so that the person you share them with can find your site easily.

3. Keep it short

Following the same reasoning as #3, it’s generally a good idea to keep your domain name short (ideally under 15 characters).

Would you prefer to visit a website called itstimetogetcuriouswithgeorge.com or curiousgeorge.com?

Longer domain names are hard to remember, and they are also prone for more typos.

4. Make it brandable

With millions of websites on the internet, you want to make sure that your domain name is unique and brandable, so that it stands out in your readers’ minds.

Take a look at other business websites in your industry to see what kind of brand names they’re using. This will give you an idea of what’s acceptable, and it will also prevent you from accidentally using a trademark domain name.

Brandable domains are short, catchy, and easy to pronounce. Think mydomaingenerator.com, OptinMonster.com, or WPBeginner.com. Or you could come up with a custom domain extension like Jasper.ai, Last.fm, Bit.ly, or DavidVillena.photography.

Choosing a brandable domain also makes it easy when it comes to finding available social media usernames.

5. Know when to use keywords

Keywords play a huge role in search engine rankings. If you want your website to rank higher in Google, then having a keyword in the domain name can be very helpful.

This is why mydomaingenerator’s domain name generator allows you to add multiple keywords to see the best combination.

You can use these creative word combinations with other words to make your domain name stand out while also boosting your chances to rank higher in search results.

6. Avoid Hyphens at all cost

While it can be tempting to choose a domain name with a hyphen just because it has your preferred keywords, we always recommend avoiding hyphens at all cost.

Hyphens can be a sign of spam domains, and you don’t want your business to be associated with that.

So for instance, people are often tempted to combine words and hyphenate them such as cure and curious to make cure-eous.com. It’s confusing and just doesn’t look right. This could also make users distrust your site instantly.

Hyphenated domains are also prone to more typos. Often your users will forget to add the hyphen and end up on a different website.

7. Avoid Double Letters

Another thing we advise our clients is to avoid domain names with double letters because it increases your chances of losing traffic to typos.

For example, a domain like businesssetup.com will be more prone to typos and result in lost traffic.

Most domain name generators or business name generators are not smart enough to avoid double letters, so it’s a very important thing to keep this in mind when choosing the domain name for your website.

We hope that you found these tips useful. Don’t forget to use these best practices when using mydomaingenerator’s instant domain search tool to choose the right domain name for your business.