How to choose a domain name

You will type this address on business cards, read it out on the phone and live with it for years. It is worth twenty minutes of thought — and considerably less than the days some people spend.

The test that matters most

Say the domain out loud to someone and have them type it without asking a question. If they have to ask “is that with a hyphen?” or “one L or two?”, it has failed the only test that counts. Every ambiguity you leave in becomes a customer who lands somewhere else.

What actually helps

• Short. Fewer characters, fewer mistakes. Two or three words is the practical ceiling.
• Your business name, if it is available. That is what people will search for once they have met you.
• Easy to spell from hearing it once. Made-up spellings look distinctive on paper and cost you traffic in person.
• No hyphens if you can avoid them. Nobody says “hyphen” out loud, and they get dropped.
• No numbers, or if you must, avoid ones that could be words. “4” and “for” are indistinguishable when spoken.

Does the extension still matter?

Yes, less than it did, but it has not stopped mattering. A .com is still what people assume and what they type when they half-remember your name. If yours is taken, a well-known country extension is a solid choice for a local business — it signals where you operate, which is useful rather than limiting when your customers are all in one country.

The newer topic extensions can work when the name reads as a whole phrase. They are weaker when they force an awkward split, and they still cause a beat of hesitation with some customers. That hesitation is the real cost, not any search penalty — extensions themselves do not rank differently.

Should the keyword be in the domain?

It does not lift you in search results the way it did fifteen years ago. It can still help a person scanning results understand what you do, which is worth something. But do not contort your business name for it — an exact-match domain full of hyphens looks like a low-quality site to both people and search engines.

Choose a name you can say once on a noisy phone line and have the other person get it right.

Mistakes that surface later

• Baking in a location you might outgrow, or a service you might drop.
• A name that reads differently when the words run together. Read it as one lowercase string before committing — this is where the famous accidental readings come from.
• Buying it on an account that belongs to your web designer rather than to you. Register it yourself, in your own name.
• Letting it lapse. Set the renewal to automatic and keep the billing card current. This is the single most damaging administrative mistake a small business makes online.

Once you have it

Turn on auto-renew, enable whatever privacy protection your registrar offers, and consider registering the obvious misspelling if your name invites one. Then use the same name on your social accounts and business listings so everything points at the same identity.