Domains, delivery and craft
What is Domain name?
The address people type to reach your site, registered in your name for a fixed period and renewed annually. It is the one asset every other part of a web presence depends on, and the one most commonly registered in somebody else’s account by accident.
Also called: web address · URL root
Choosing one that works
- Short enough to say over the phone without spelling it
- Spelled the way it sounds — no hyphens, no numbers, no creative substitutions
- A country-code TLD for a local business, .com for international ambitions
- Checked against your national trademark register before you buy
- Available as a matching handle on the platforms you will use
Exact-match domains are not a shortcut
The 2012 exact-match domain update removed most of the ranking benefit of stuffing keywords into the address. bestplumberlondon.com does not outrank a better site, and it reads like an advertisement rather than a business, which costs more in trust than it ever gained in search.
Register it yourself
Your business name, your email, your registrar account, auto-renew on, transfer lock enabled. A domain in a developer’s account is a negotiation waiting to happen, and transfers take days even when everyone is cooperating.
Where this is covered in depth
A definition can only go so far. Who actually owns your website — a checklist you can verify today covers this properly — 3 minutes, free, no email required.
Who wrote this
Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada and Pakistan. These definitions come from client work rather than from a content brief — where an entry describes a mistake, it is usually one found on a real site. More about how I work.