5 MISTAKES PEOPLE MAKE WHEN CHOOSING A DOMAIN NAME

Think you’ve found the perfect domain name for
your new website?

Make sure you don’t make one of these big
mistakes.

1. The domain doesn’t pass the
“radio test” or is hard to spell.

The “radio test” simply asks if someone will
know how to spell your domain name if you tell
someone the name at a bar or they hear it over
the radio. Domains that have cute spellings or
are missing letters are difficult for people to
remember and type correctly. To see if your
domain passes this test, call five friends and
tell them the name. Can they spell it?
An episode of NBC’s 30 Rock made fun of
website names that mean one thing but sound
like another. In a 2011 episode, Jenna Maroney
(Jane Krakowski) named a web site
JennasSide.com. Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) pointed
out that it sounds like a completely different
(and unfortunate) word when spoken.

2. The domain says something
different.

SpeedofArt.com and TherapistFinder.com
might seem like good domains for an art site
and therapist directory, respectively. But if you
change the capitalization, they say something
completely different! (Think about it.)

3. It has a trademark problem.

It’s important to not use a domain name that
infringes on another company’s trademark. You
might think you came up with a creative
domain for your new business, but what if
another business uses a similar name for the
same type of company?
There are a number of databases you can
check to look for trademarks, such as
Trademark247.com.

4. The domain name uses a
country code domain that isn’t
global.

Have you seen a domain name that ends in .tv,
.co or .io? These two letter domains are what’s
called country code domain names, and each
one is assigned to a country. .Tv is for Tuvalu,
.Co is for Colombia and .Io is for British Indian
Ocean Territory.

Because these domain names have been
adopted by many websites that aren’t specific
to these countries, Google treats them the
same as generic domains like .com when it
comes to figuring out the location a site
targets.

Google treats other country code domains,
such as .uk for United Kingdom, as geographic
indicators. So unless your site targets people
in the United Kingdom, you probably shouldn’t
use a .uk domain.

5. It has a double meaning.

There’s a lot of slang out there these days, and
even the cool kids can’t always keep up.
Before you pick a domain, make sure that the
term doesn’t mean something else in slang or
a foreign language. Check out
UrbanDictionary.com for the latest slang.

Source:
https://blog.namecheap.com/5-mistakes-people-make-when-choosing-a-domain-name/