What’s in a name? Well, quite a bit, and not least where domain names are considered. In fact, the domain name you choose for your company website can have a very real impact on your branding and on your search engine optimization (SEO) potential.

To be clear, we should start by noting exactly what we mean when we talk about a domain name: Basically, it’s your company’s website address. Ours is encompassagency.com—which seems simple enough, right? For some businesses it is indeed a straightforward decision, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few factors to weigh and consider.

Should You Just Go With Your Brand Name?

For starters: Is it always best to do an exact match for your brand name—like how our company website perfectly matches the company name, encompassagency.com? Generally speaking this is preferable, if only because that’s how a lot of users are going to try to find you—by entering your company name into a Google search bar, adding a .com, pressing enter, and hoping for the best.

It is possible that your exact match domain name is already in use by someone else. Hopefully that’s something you checked for before deciding on the brand name; if not, it may actually be worth changing the brand name to get an exact match domain, or else opting for something like .biz or .co instead of .com—but more on that momentarily.

Other options include long-tail keyword domain name—something like buysupplementshere.com or findawebdesigner.com. Domains like these were once sort of trendy among enterprising SEOs, and as a result Google has started to look on them less kindly. From a search engine optimization standpoint, they’re not recommended. An alternative is to go super-generic with something like supplements.com or webdesign.com, but be warned that names like these will cost you a truly extravagant sum of money. For most businesses, this isn’t going to be a viable option.

Other Domain Name Issues to Consider

A few other points to think about:

• Make sure to pick a domain name that allows for future growth. If your company is currently called Ace Pet Care Tennessee but you plan on expanding into other states within a few years, you may not want to pick a domain name that confines you to TN.
• One way to get a domain name that closely fits your brand is to hyphenate—but hyphenated domains have a negative, spammy connation, and also hinder your word of mouth buzz. (People have to remember to say the hyphen when they’re telling someone else about the site.) Be aware of these potential drawbacks as you consider going the hyphenated route.
• If your preferred domain name is taken by a company with the same name but a different vertical, you might try adding a small, generic descriptor; Ace Pet Care probably doesn’t want to pay big bucks for ace.com, but maybe acepetcare.com, acepets.com, or something similar will work.
• Finally, know that .net and other domain types are out there, and in some cases work just fine—but there are many users who simply assume a .com address and will even type .com when they mean to type .co or .net or .biz. Again, from a branding and word of mouth perspective, it could potentially be a hurdle.

The domain name you pick matters, and though it’s an easy decision for some companies it’s tougher for others. For insight from our team, don’t hesitate to call enCOMPASS today.