[This blog post is part of the Ultimate-Guide-to-Launching-a-Wordpress-Powered-Website-For-Your-Small-Business Series. Check out the rest here!]
Choosing the right domain name for your business is very important and it is imperative that you find the right domain name for your small business. Sometimes it can be relatively easy to find the right domain name and other times it can be quite difficult. However, we’re going to go over a few tips on how to choose the perfect domain name for your business.
Choose a dot com domain name
Choose a domain name with either a dot com extension or a local extension such as .ca, which is the Canadian top level domain or .com.au, which is the Australian domain name extension, other wise known as top level domain’s or TLD’s for short. However, you should try to get a dot com domain name as it will be hard to explain to someone why you have a .org or .net which are traditionally supposed to be reserved for non profit organizations and online business’. Plus as soon as your mention a website people think of dot.com so you’ll want to try to get a domain name with that extension. That being said, if someone already has the .dot com extension you run the risk of losing business to a competitor because users may simply go to the dot com domain without even thinking about it.
Choose a Keyword Rich Domain Name
Since you are a local small business you have two options when choosing a domain name, to register your corporate business name as a domain name or to use a local keyword search term such as www.edmontondentalcare.ca. The advantages of using a local keyword search term in your domain is it is more relevant to the search engines as well as users and will cost you less in the long run to rank the domain name in an organic search marketing campaign. That being said, I would register both as it is not uncommon nor unwise for business to use more than one domain name for marketing purposes, especially since domains names are so inexpensive these days.
Choose a domain name that has Authority
With almost every single word in the English language being registered as a domain name it can be difficult to pick one that hasn’t already been taken. However, try adding the word “pro” or “pros” to the end of the domain name. Such as www.edmontonrealestatepros.com Not only is this domain name keyword rich but it also carries some authority with it as everyone want’s to deal with a pro. If “pro” or pros is taken you may want to consider adding the word “the” to the front of the domain name, this is known as a domain prefix, but I would encourage you to instead find a different suffix such as experts or centre for instance, edmontonrealestatecentre.com This is a good domain name because you will be known as a centre for information and advice as you implement an online campaign and this are the days of information marketing. People are looking to be informed before they buy thus you will want to consider this before implementing an SEO campaign.
Use Tools to Assist You in Choosing a Domain Name
It can seem rather daunting to know where to start, but the first place to start is with keyword research as I mentioned in my article: “Keyword Research Tips for Your WordPress Website” however one tool that I would highly recommend for you to use in finding the perfect domain name is www.domainsamurai.com and the best part is that it is free.
As I said, Domain Samurai is a free tool from Alliance Software, the makers of Market Samurai, which is the paid version of the software and has a lot more bings and whistles (in that you can also examine the search engine competition with the market samurai) but when it comes to simply doing keyword research and choosing a domain name you cannot go wrong with domain samurai. It has the same keyword tool built into it from Market Samurai and will enable you to enter different prefix’s and suffixes to get that perfect keyword.
Choose the Right Domain Name Registrar
There are a lot of domain name registrar’s out there but you want to be careful which one you choose as the company could be here today and gone tomorrow. So you wan to choose a company that you can trust will be here 6 months from now so that you’re domain name isn’t lost in cyber space. Again, there are many companies out there however, I have chosen to register all of my domain names with www.namecheap.com Reason being, because as their name says, they’re cheap, you can register a domain name for less than $10 per year. I recommend you register your domain name for at least 10 years. This way you won’t have to worry about losing your domain name and while it can’t be proven it has been suggested that having a domain name that is registered longer than a year may affect your search engine rankings to a small degree. Nevertheless it will display to your customers and prospects that you are not a fly by night company.
Choosing the right domain name for your small business is important and I hope that the previous tips have been helpful. If you have any questions or if I can assist in any way please either leave a comment below or send me a message by filing out the contact form (as this helps to diminish the amount of spam that I get.)
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Matt Fraser is a graduate of www.sesssions.edu an online design school based out of New York. He is fanatatic about Wordpress, Web design and SEO. When not surfing the internet and reading about the afore metioned topics you can find him walking his dog, a Border Collie Beagle named Daisy, or riding his Bike in the river valley. 
