Your name is your best asset. It’s why we get really excited when we see our name on a keychain or really disappointed when we never do. One of the best ways to be a good leader and a simple hack to making people like you more is to use their name when you talk to them. It’s simple; our name gives us purpose and power.

Just see the difference it makes in Junior…

Now imagine if he just got his perfect domain name… WOAH! Your job is to recreate that magic when registering a domain name online. After all, your name is your brand and your brand is you!

The Domain Ending

There are so many options as far as domain endings go. You can keep it simple with a Classic TLD like .COM, the golden standard of domain names. You can tell people who you are and what you do with a New Domain like .BANK, .SURF, .BLOG, .ART or use one of the New TLDs as a call to action with .VOTE, .GIVES, .REVIEWS, .EXCHANGE. There are also Country Code Domains that double as trendy industry-specific domains endings such as .AI for artificial intelligence, .GG for the gaming industry and .VC for venture capital.

If your name is unavailable in .COM, you can still get the name you want with an International Domain hack (we have 233 to choose from)! .AM is the Country Code Domain for Armenia, but have you ever noticed how many words end with “am”? There’s diagram, exam, jetstream, dream, gram, scream and Instagram (who is using the domain ending) just to name a few!

The Domain Name Structure

The shorter the domain name the better because our memory is awful and you want your brand’s website to be easily recalled. Aim for under 3 words! You can use hyphens in your domain name but we don’t recommend this. You want your name to be as direct as possible so potential customers can type it in and find you. The last thing you want is for someone to type in your domain name without the hyphen and be taken to your competitor’s website.

This is also the reason brands register multiple domain names. Domains are commonly registered for defensive purposes. In scenarios like typos, misspellings and missing characters, you can redirect all of them to your main domain name so none of your customers get lost in the rabbit hole of the internet.

Sometimes when the domain name you searched for is unavailable it will suggest adding on words. Trust us, ditch the “the” and “my” and the unnecessary characters in your domain name. Just today, I was registering a username for a website and typed in my go-to name “helloshani” and when that was showing as already taken I just added on and extra “i” as I always do, making my username “helloshanii” (which is usually always available – and it was, yay!). This works great for usernames on websites I don’t really care about, but you wouldn’t want to do this with your brand’s website. If someone heard my helloshani brand (not real) in passing, on the radio or through word-of-mouth they’re not going to think to add extra “i”s at the end of the name when they search for me online, which leads to missed opportunities for me.

Keywords

Having keywords in your domain name is great, it could make the difference in why an internet user clicks on your website in search results over a competitor’s. The New Domains can help you rank better organically with keywords directly in the domain ending. Keywords in the URL are great as long as they are natural, you don’t want to oversaturate your domain name with something like SallysShoeStore.Shoes (try saying that 5 times fast).

At the end of the day, you can’t really register a domain name wrong. Worst case scenario you spell it wrong, but like I said before, even that is something you can turn into a positive! Don’t forget to check out our 10 Domain Registration Do’s and Don’ts if you want more tips on choosing the perfect domain name for your brand!