5 Tips on how to choose your local business domain name

October 25, 2018
lenakhalid
Business advice, Digital Marketing, Local Marketing

Your local business domain name or website address is one of the key components in any SEO strategy.

If you haven’t registered a business domain name, here are a few tips to guide you in choosing one:

1. Whatever business domain name you choose, make sure it ends in .com.

However if that is not possible you can also use .org and .net extensions. These three extensions are the best ones to use for the US online market.

2. Avoid using hyphenated business domain names.

For example, just because you the domain name www.doctorsinnewyork.com is already taken, don’t register a hyphenated version like www.doctors-innewyork or www.doctors-in-newyork. Hyphenated domains don’t give the impression of being authority domain and have a low grade image in SEO. Instead try adding a prefix or suffix such as www.doctorsinnewyorkonline.com or www.emergencydoctorsinnewyork.com. Needless to say if you really want to hyphenate, use no more than 1-2 hyphens.

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3. Keep your business domain names short and don’t elongate them to longer than 3 or 4 words.

For example if you run a hardware shop called “Anthony Bradley and Sons Hardware & Electricals”, you may want to use www.abradleyandsons.com or www.bradleyhardware.com. You definitely don’t want to register www.anthonybradleyandsonshardwareandelectricals.com!

4. Even if you operate as franchise or dealership for a major company, avoid using branded company names in your domain as this is illegal and you could get sued. If you want to use brand names in your domain always get written permission from the brand owners.

5. It is wise to build a site using your keywords in the domain for additional SEO leverage.

Let’s say you run a pizza joint called Papa Pedro’s Pizza and your keywords “pizza in nyc”, it would make sense to register both www.papapedrospizza.com and www.pizzainnyc.com. In this way you can have multiple website rankings from one keyword using the two sites. Just imagine if you registered all your keywords as domains- you could easily own the first page of Google for those keywords with proper SEO!