If you want your website to represent a certain brand, you need to make sure that you choose the right URL to drive as much traffic to your site as possible. The right URL can drive direct as well as organic traffic, leading to tons of visitors to your site.
Here are some excellent tips to help you choose the right URL for your company:
Make it Memorable
First things first, your URL should be simple and easy to remember. Think of the most popular sites out there that people visit on a daily basis: Google, Facebook, Reddit. All of these names are short, sweet, and to the point. If your business creates some ridiculously long name that is hard to spell and takes more than a few seconds to type out, consider something else.
Make it Unique
When choosing a domain name, it should be extremely unique. You don’t want to be lumped in with other companies, do you? Try to choose a URL with a name that will be all your own. It does not even matter if you made up the word or not, but make sure that it doesn’t relate to another popular company that is already out there. If you make that mistake, visitors may assume that both companies are related or worse.
Along with creating a unique URL, you need to be sure that you aren’t infringing on anyone’s copyright. It would be horrible if you get your business together, create your website, gain tons of traffic, only to be shut down by a company or person that claims you’re infringing on their copyright. Take the necessary steps to ensure that you are in the clear. The United States Patent and Trademark Office has tools that make this process a cinch; there should be no reason you run aground.
You also need to choose the right top-level domain (“TLD”). If you are operating a for-profit venture, you’ll want the tried and true “dot com” TLD, While .net and .org URLs may be available for your sites name, a .com URL conveys the most authority, is largely used for commercial enterprises and is the domain that most people are familiar with. This also relates to a point referenced earlier.
Some TLD such as .edu and .gov are reserved for specific entities (accredited educational institutions and government institutions, respectively). Other TLD are available to all and can be used for any purpose, but generally speaking, types of TLD tend to convey a certain purpose to the audience. Selecting a .org TLD for a commercial enterprise may confuses your audience. However there are no formal rules (beyond those already mentioned) and trial and error may be worthwhile. It is still not clear how the major search engines weight the TLD when ranking sites in search results.
Explicitly Stated
If you’re trying to create a unique brand with your URL, you should fulfill expectations. When people type in your URL, do they know exactly what your website is about already? Sites like AutoTrader already tell exactly what their site is about within their domain name. Opposite of this are names like Google, which require far more branding in order to get people to understand what the site is actually about.
Choosing your URL should depend entirely on the message you are trying to convey to your visitors (and the amount of resources you have to invest to build brand equity; a brand like Google takes considerable investment (in Google’s case the investment was made with innovation)).
Avoid Using Hyphens
Although it may be tempting, you should almost never obtain a URL for your company with a hyphen. While the URL may be available with a hyphen, this isn’t necessarily your golden ticket. URLs with hyphens can easily by mistyped or even forgotten, as the hyphen breaks up the URL, making it feel like there is more to remember.
Exact Match URL
Most ventures choosing a URL have an existing brand that they are attempting to leverage. While obviously you can benefit from the existing brand equity, this isn’t a requirement. In fact it may not even be possible. For instance, if the name of your business is “The Corner Store” odds are you aren’t going to find a URL to match. You’ll need to add words or choose a different path.
This opens you up to selecting a URL that matches what your audience is looking for. If “The Corner Store” sells tobacco, you may be better off selecting “MainStreetAustinTobaccoShop.com” that “MainStreetAustinCornerStore.com” One of the factors in the Google search rankings is also exact match between the search term and the URL, therefore, applications like Google’s Keyword tool can be very useful in identifying phrases that are broadly searched.
If you select this path, to come up with a URL for your company or business, you should first take out a piece of paper or open up a blank document and write in your top ten words or phrases that you think relate best to your business. Once you have this list compiled, start to combine the words and phrases together. After you’ve created these combinations, try coming up with different variations of certain words. Look up synonyms and replace them with certain words and see if the URL sounds good.
The key here is to create a list as large as possible. Then you should go and see if your URL names are available for purchase and find the one with the best word exact word match and brand cache as possible.
About the author: Jessica Stambaugh writes for EverSpark Interactive, an Atlanta SEO company that specializes in building a robust internet presence for its clients.