Checklist: Choosing a Domain Name

When establishing your online presence, you'll need a new website. Your business plan must include a website and a domain name. Thanks to AI's current status, website builders can suggest a domain name for you and link your secondary pages to your landing page within the domain name.

Whether you let the AI do the hard work or want to do it yourself, you must optimize your domain name to match your online and email marketing strategy. If your web design is a vibrant celebration of your vinyl revival music store, you need a domain name that reflects it. Not a cookie-cutter "sherryswebsite.com" domain.

Startup small businesses want their user experience outstanding from the first click. That begins with your domain name. Potential customers know about your business before they reach your homepage based on your domain name. Different customers will come to “sherrysrecords.com" than to “rokkinrekkerds.com."

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Best Practices for Choosing a Domain Name

The following small business website checklist can help you choose a domain name for your own business. Depending on your business idea, there may be other considerations for your domain:

• Keep it short and sweet. The days of edgy domain names are long over. Your domain name should reflect your business purpose, location, or service. Keep it under 15 characters, and avoid special characters, numbers, and hyphens. Watch out for unintended profanity, and remember that all the characters will be lower-case without punctuation. "Sherry's Hit Shop" will not be a good domain name for a music store.
• .com is still the best domain. Despite the rise of other domains, .com is still the go-to domain for new businesses. Other domains like ".city" or ".store" exist because .com is running out of unused names. Consider your target audience. Small business owners should consider .store. Nonprofit agencies can apply for .org.
• Use SEO keywords if possible. Keywords are those words everyone thinks of when they do a Google search. If your business and domain name have a search engine keyword in common, use it. The only difficulty is that many keyword domain names have already been taken.
• Run a trademark and social media search on your chosen domain name. Facebook and Instagram can identify anyone with that domain name right away. You should also run a WhoIs search to see if anyone already claimed your name.
• If the name is taken, try some variations. You want functionality, not perfection. If "sherrysrecords.com" has already been taken, try "sherrysrecordstore.com" or "recordsofsherry." The link will go to your webpage, so the exact name of the URL is less critical.
• Try to stay close to your business name. You still want to stay close to your company name. Your domain should not sound like a different company's name. "Sherry's Hit Shop" should not have the domain name "jerrysrecordstore."
• Consider potential mistakes potential customers could make when typing your URL. Entering a URL is less common today with drag-and-drop search engines, but it happens. Check to see where your customers may end up if they transpose letters or add an extra "s." If they land on a competitor or a porn site, rethink your domain name.
• Register your domain through an accredited registration service. Remember to renew it if you don't use it right away.
• Follow the same general rules as business names. See Dos and Don'ts: Business Names.

Do You Have a Legal Question? Talk to a Business Lawyer Today

Laws and regulations even affect domain names. Entrepreneurs can handle many tasks, but some legal matters need experts. If you need help securing a trademark or have any other legal concerns about choosing a business or domain name, talk with a business and commercial law attorney.

See FindLaw's Internet and E-Commerce section for related resources.