Choosing Domain Names

The rules around choosing a domain name have changed over the last few years. It's now much more difficult to get the "perfect" domain name… but it's also much less important to get the "perfect" domain name.

It used to be about .com and typos

When we were looking for our first company name, it was very important to us to be able to secure the corresponding ".com" address. Because ".com" was cool.

Even back then (2003) it seemed that "all the good names were gone." We had no choice (given our perceived need for an address of the form [company name].com) to go for a rather contrived company name.

In the end we settled on:

contentAtoZ.com

It seemed to make sense (though we weren't sure why) to grab the .co.uk variant at the same time:

contentAtoZ.co.uk

After that, our mind was on what people might type into the address bar of a browser. That led us to bag another four addresses:

contentA2Z.co.uk
contentA2Z.com
contentA-Z.co.uk
contentA-Z.com

So off we went with our six domain names and a nice warm glow.

We wouldn't do that now.

It's now about search and blocking

Google - and the other search engines - changed the rules.

.com is still cool... but .co.uk gets better search results

When you choose a .com address, you go up against the world, search-wise. But choose a .co.uk address and the search engines know you're in the UK, removing most of the "competition."

Similarly, for organisations (rather than companies), .org is a good choice if your reach is international… but org.uk would be a better choice for a UK-only organisation.

People still type into the address bar...

They do. But here's the key question: how likely are people to try to type your domain address?

There are some cases where it would be worth considering what people might type:

• If the organisation is already well known - people type "bbc.co.uk" and "microsoft.com" all the time
• If the organisation is being heavily promoted offline

For most other organisations, the chances of being "typed in" are slim. (I would bet that the number of people who attempted "contentatoz.co.uk" - or some variation of it - could be counted on the figures of one hand.)

... but many more people type into a search box

These days, people are far more likely search for your website, rather than waste time typing in the address box.

(Many people - myself included - search for websites even when they know the domain name!)

The problem is that the address box is a dumb animal: it's an exact match or error. A search engine, by comparison, is really rather good at correcting your spelling!

Worked Example

Last year (2005) we renamed our company to BRAINBOX. We did so even though we knew that both brainbox.co.uk and brainbox.com were already taken.

That's the first change: we no longer insist on [company-name].com.

We then went looking for a suitable suffix that could be added to BRAINBOX in order to get a .co.uk. domain name.

That's the second change: As our business is UK-focused, we're far more interested in .co.uk than .com.

We ended up with www.brainboxweb.co.uk as our "prime" domain name. This is the address where our website resides, and it is the address that appears on our printed literature... and it's the target of all our search engine efforts.

Did we buy other addresses? Yes:

www.brainboxweb.com
www.brainboxsolutions.co.uk
www.brainboxgroup.co.uk

We bought the first to prevent others from taking it (to "block"), and the others because we thought they might be of use at some point in the future.

That's the third change: we still buy multiple addresses, but we do so to "block" rather than to handle typos.

Choosing domain names in 2006 - A Summary

1. Decide on the extension that's right for your organisation:
   • .com if your scope is global, .co.uk if you scope is the UK... and consider .eu if your scope is European.
   • .org for a global organisation... .org.uk for a uk-only organisation
2. Obtain a domain name that is close to your company name. An exact match is great, but it's not everything.
3. Buy any address that you wouldn't want others to have.

Common Pitfalls

This discussion would be incomplete if I didn't highlight two of the most common domain name-related pitfalls:

Proper Handling of Multiple domain names

If you decide to purchase additional domain names, you must ensure that - from the search engines' point of view - that there is only one website. You can do this in two basic ways:

• Buy the additional domains, but leave them "parked"
• Activate them, and ensure that that they are properly redirected to the prime domain. (I'll cover what constitutes "properly" in a future article.)

Fail to do this and you run the risk of being banned by the search engines.

Changing your primary domain name

If you decide (as we did) to change your primary domain name, please be aware that search engines - especially Google - treat recently registered domain names with suspicion. It may take a long time (6 - 12 months) to regain the search engine ranking enjoyed by your "old" domain name.