I’m always surprised by the number of businesses, large organizations and professionals I see using someone else’s domain name for a blog. Often this takes the form of hosting a blog on one of the major hosting sites — wordpress.com or blogspot.com, for instance. I suspect this is because many people don’t understand how inexpensive and easy it use to use one of those services with a domain name of your choosing. Why bother at all?
1. Portability. Even if you’re using a hosting service such wordpress.com now, so long as you own your own domain it’s easy to transfer your blog to a self-hosted service down the road (more on this in another post). Once you have a domain name registered, you can “point” it to whatever hosting service you like.
2. It’s more professional. It just looks more professional, and thus is better marketing, to have your own domain name. It suggests to visitors that you have put more time and energy into the site, and that it’s more legitimate.
3. Your domain name will probably be shorter. When you’re putting that URL on business cards, in emails or giving it out to people over the phone or in person, shorter is better. Generally yourdomain.com will be shorter than yourdomain.somehostingservice.com. This also means there’s less chance people will make a mistake and fail to actually get to your site if they type the domain name into a web browser.
That said, choosing a domain name is something you should spend some time on. Here are some factors to consider:
1. If at all possible, choose a .com domain name. The .com extension is the one that people often assume a domain name has. Other extensions, such as .net or .biz, simply aren’t as intuitive for most web users.
2. Choose something that’s as short as possible and as easy to spell as possible. Although I own the domain name marktosczak.com, I don’t use it here because my last name is difficult to spell. Instead, I’ve chosen marktzk, which is easy to give out over the phone and easy to spell (and roughly, phonetically equivalent to my name).
3. For SEO, choose relevant keywords. If you’re a dentist, you might want to choose a domain name with the word ‘dentist’ or ‘dentistry’ or something similar in it. People may search for those terms, and you’ll have a better chance of coming up higher in the rankings if search terms are actually used in your URL. (In case you’re wondering why, it’s because links to your sight are more likely to include that search term in the display text, which is one of the criteria Google uses in ranking web site search results.)
4. Pick a name that is relevant to your brand or what your web site will be about. If your web site is about you, or you want to brand based on your name or personal identity, then a name-based site is fine. If your web site is about fitness, then choose a domain name that somehow references that idea.
So, what are the mechanics of finding and buying a great domain name? Here’s a process that has worked for me over the years.
1. Brainstorm lots of domain name ideas. For each one, go to a domain name registrar and type it in to see if it is taken. If you’re hunting for .com domains, chances are many of your ideas will already be registered. But, if you keep at this long enough you’ll eventually find a list of domain names that you like reasonably well and that are available. Here’s a tip if you’re having trouble finding good names: Take your preferred terms (ex. “dentist” or “fitness”) and add a common word on to the end of it – “hq” or “book”, for example. So you might end up with a domain such as “fitnesshq.com.” (Though, that particular name is already taken.)
2. Go to the domain name registrar of your choice and register the name. You ought to be able to get a domain from a reliable registrar for about $10 a year, often less. I’m surprised that there are still people paying $35 a year, though for many businesses this is not a significant expense. I use Namecheap.com (affiliate link) for most of my domains. It’s inexpensive, reliable and has a range of free extras included.
If this is a personal domain, such as for a blog, I would recommend also getting a privacy guard feature installed. Namecheap uses a service called “WhoisGuard.” When you register a domain, you’re required to provide a valid mailing address and other information. This information is available publicly via searches. So if you give your home address, anybody who knows your domain name can find your home address. But privacy services insert a third-party company address into this record, hiding your personal information.
3. If you’re using a hosting service, such as wordpress.com (which I recommend if you are going to use such a service), enable “URL forwarding” on your domain. Your domain name registrar basically sets your domain information so that it points to your website, and when people enter your domain in a browser they are sent to whatever site you have it forwarded to.
That’s it. What other tips and resources do you have for choosing a domain name? Please share them in the comments below.
Related posts:
In no particular order, I'm a writer, MBA, ex-journalist, blogger, geek, strategic communications pro, father, struggling novelist 
