10 tips for choosing a good domain name for your company

Top 10 tips for choosing a good domain name for your company:

1. Contain your company/brand name.
2. Does not contain hyphen or numbers (unless necessary or they are part of your brand)
3. Easy to spell. Should be able to spell correctly just by listening to it.
4. The lesser the words, the easier to remember and more valuable the domain name will be.
5. Always make .COM your first choice. If it is taken, then only go for .NET, .BIZ or other general TLD or country code TLD (if your company is based in Malaysia, register .com.my NOT .co.uk or .com.sg).
6. Descriptive. People should be able to get a hint about your website or business from your domain name. If it contains key terms, it may help in search engine ranking.
7. With the price of domains getting cheaper, anyone can afford to register multiple domains just for one website. Especially for domain with generic names, don’t just register .com only, register .net, org, .biz, .com.my, etc… as well.
8. Proof read it. Make sure your domain name cannot be read in other ways that brings totally different meaning or worse, embarrassing meaning.
9. Make sure the domain name is not a trademark of another company. Legal battle of domain name dispute is not pretty. To make sure you have a clear name, check it with your attorney or a trademark company.
10. If your desired domain name is taken by someone else and you have the budget, offer to buy the domain name from the current owner. Who can resist a good price? A good place to start is at Sedo.com.

I am sure it is getting harder and harder to get a domain base on the above tips. So my suggestion is reverse the process. If you are a new company, search for the available domain names and REGISTER THE DOMAIN NAME FIRST before you choose your company name. You don’t want to spend millions of RM on branding and find out all the good domain names have been taken by someone else.

If you already have a company name, for example; Acme Sdn Bhd and it is in pet food business but acme.com is already taken by someone else then you might want to consider registering acme.com.my or acmepetfood.com or even both.