What’s in a Name

Building a website is all about choices: what kind of service do you want to offer? Do you want to utilize e-commerce? What kind of host will you use? What exactly do you want your website to accomplish?

Compared to all of these big-picture questions addressing structure and concept, the simple question “what do you want to name your website?” might seem relatively unimportant. Don’t be fooled, though: your website name is one of the most influential decisions that you are going to make. Here are a few of the factors that you should take into account:

• Search engine friendly. Though ‘keyword stuffing’ is never a good idea, it is generally advisable that your title have at least one important keyword relevant to your industry.
• Friendly on the eyes. Keep your title short, sweet, and to the point: this will make it easier to read and remember.
• Friendly on the ears. Similarly, choose a name with an intuitive pronunciation. Failing to do this could cost you quite a few verbal references over the years.
• No numbers, no hyphens. Though perfectly acceptable within the framework of your website, your actual website title should not include numbers or hyphens, as this looks very unprofessional.
• Do your research. Make sure your website name isn’t too close to another business–this could be an SEO nightmare at best and a potential lawsuit at worst!
• Use the appropriate extension. Unless your company is a specific type of organization, you should use a dot com extension. If you are in doubt as to which extension you should use, consult this handy Quora guide. Note that, depending on funds, you may wish to go ahead and cross register each and every website extension with your name in order to prevent trouble down the road.
• Act quickly! Domain names can go quickly, and once they are gone, convincing the owner to sell you the domain can be complicated and expensive. Register your domain name today with People’s Host!