5 Tips to Create a Success Driven Small Business Domain Name Strategy

You have small business ideas and you need strong digital strategies to overcome the competition. Nowadays, your business either has an online presence or its falling behind the competition. Having a digital strategy means the difference between long-term success and a quick nosedive into failure in the modern business world, which is why building a strong online presence should be at the top of your list of priorities. What’s more, your digital strategy should be broken down into various sections, categories, and different projects, the most important of which is choosing and building a strong domain name for your business. Having a strong domain name will build website authority, brand trust, and recognition, and it will drive your marketing, sales, and PR strategies forward.

To achieve all of this, you have to have a clear plan in place and know the key elements of a winning domain name while staying clear of the common pitfalls and mistakes that business leaders make when creating their domain name strategy. Let’s take a look at the five crucial tips that will help you build the best domain name for your brand and its online presence.

1. The different types of domain names

Many marketers and business leaders will struggle with the problem of devising the right domain name for their company, often being unsure how to approach the problem of domain name creation. This is because there are benefits and drawbacks to different domain name types, and because there are certain considerations you have to take into account in order to ensure domain stickiness, authority, recognition, as well as its value to the search engines. After all, your goal should be to make your domain as relevant to the online audience as possible.

To start, you have to know the different types. You can narrow domain names down to branded domains and industry-specific domains. The former are the domains that bear your brand name, and the latter are the domains that closely portray what you do. You can easily weave a relevant keyword into the latter, but a branded domain will make your company more recognizable and memorable in the online world. All things considered, the best option is to brand your domain, and try to integrate a relevant keyword if it sounds natural and doesn’t affect domain name stickiness in a negative way.

2. Emphasize domain name security

A big part of your strategy is finding a domain name provider, also known as a registrar, that emphasizes the security of their domains. Now that cybersecurity is becoming increasingly important in the digital world, it’s no longer enough to have a strong firewall or to use a VPN to ensure the security of your network and data stores – you also need to elevate the security of your domain name.

You can achieve this by choosing a reputable registrar, but also by leveraging some advanced security features. Be sure to enable two-factor authentication for your domain name account, enable WHOIS protection, and use a strong password management tool to create randomized security codes and update them regularly.

3. Choosing the right top-level domain

The next important consideration is the domain name extension, or the TLD. It should go without saying that you have to have a top-level domain in order to improve domain name authority in the eyes of the search engines and your online audience. That said, standard TLDs like .com or .net are typically preferred or you can choose a lower-tier extension for your domain.

4. Making your domain catchy and memorable

It should go without saying that your domain name needs to be catchy and memorable so that you can gain exposure and attract traffic from branded searches – which will help you boost your SEO efforts in the long run. Aside from choosing a memorable domain extension, you also need to make your domain short and punchy, something that is easy to spell out.

Modern brands will often make the mistake of intentionally misspelling their brand names to make them more appealing to the online audience, but that has the potential to confuse their customers. Be sure to stick with grammatically-correct branded domain names, and if you’re misspelling it on purpose, then make sure that it reads well.

5. Domain name features to avoid

Last but not least, there are several common mistakes when creating a domain name strategy that you have to avoid at all costs. Be sure to avoid putting numbers and special characters into the domain name if you want people to find your site easily. These include hyphens and underscores and every other special character out there.  What’s more, don’t choose domain names that sound similar to other popular domains to avoid driving traffic to other sites. These mistakes can negatively impact your SEO score and reputation, so be sure to stay away from them if you want to build a strong and authoritative digital presence.

Wrapping up

Choosing the right domain name might not be the only key element of a winning online strategy, but it is definitely one of its foundational pillars. Be sure to use these tips to create a success-driven domain name strategy that will skyrocket your online presence.

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