8 domain name mistakes to avoid
A domain is cheap to register and expensive to change once it is on your signage, your email and your customers' bookmarks. These are the mistakes worth catching early.
1. Falling for a name before checking it
The most common mistake is emotional. You settle on a name, design a logo in your head, then find it is taken and compromise badly. Check availability first and choose from names you can have.
2. Missing the hidden word
Run words together and new ones can appear across the join. Write your name in lower case with no spaces and read it slowly, then ask someone else to read it cold. Several well-known sites learned this after launch.
3. Ignoring trademarks
Registering a domain gives you no right to use a name someone else has protected. A name close to an existing brand in your field can end in a demand letter and a forced rebrand. Search the name and check trademark records before you spend money on it.
4. Using hyphens and digits
best-plumber-4-you is hard to say and harder to remember. People drop hyphens and guess wrong on digits. If the only free version of a name needs them, pick a different name.
5. Chasing a spelling trend
Dropping vowels or swapping letters dates a name to the year it was fashionable and makes it harder to spell forever. If you invent a spelling, make sure it is still obvious when heard.
6. Going too narrow
Naming the business after one product or one town works until you grow. Leave yourself room for the second thing you will sell.
7. Making it too long
Stuffing in keywords to describe everything, as in affordablefamilydentistspringfield, gives you a name nobody will type. Keyword-heavy names get no special treatment from search engines, so the length buys you nothing.
8. Letting it lapse
Plenty of businesses lose their name by missing a renewal. Turn on auto-renew, keep the payment card current, and register the domain in an account the business controls, not a former employee's or an old agency's.
A quick pre-purchase check
- Say it aloud and have someone write it down.
- Read it in lower case for hidden words.
- Search the name and look for existing businesses.
- Check trademark records in the countries you will trade in.
- Look at what is on the other common endings.
Five minutes on these saves most of the trouble above.
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