Ownership
How to choose a domain name
Pick something short, sayable over the phone, and spelled the way it sounds. Prefer your country code TLD for a local business or .com for an international one, and check trademark conflicts before you buy.
Before you start
- Candidate names
- A registrar and a trademark search tool
The steps
-
Step 1: Say each candidate out loud
If you have to spell it every time, it is the wrong name.
-
Step 2: Avoid hyphens and numbers
Both are ambiguous spoken and both look cheaper written.
-
Step 3: Keep it short
Under 15 characters where possible. It has to fit on a van and in a signature.
-
Step 4: Choose the TLD deliberately
Country code for a business serving one country; .com for international ambitions.
-
Step 5: Search for trademark conflicts
Your national IP office database. Building a brand on an infringing name is expensive to undo.
-
Step 6: Check social handle availability
Consistency across platforms is worth a small compromise on the name.
-
Step 7: Register it in your own name
Your business, your email, your registrar account. Never your developer’s.
-
Step 8: Enable auto-renew and lock it
Expiry is a common and entirely preventable disaster.
Exact-match domains are not a ranking advantage
The exact-match domain update in 2012 removed most of the benefit, and what remains is negligible. bestplumberlondon.com does not outrank a better site, and it reads like an advert rather than a business.
Free subdomains cost more than they save
A .it.nf or .netlify.app address is fine for testing and wrong for a business. You cannot move it, you cannot control its DNS, and every card and invoice carrying it has to be reprinted when you finally buy a real one.
The background behind this
Buying a website: the questions that decide what you actually own covers the reasoning in about 5 minutes — free, ungated, written from client work.
Who wrote this
Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada, Ireland and Pakistan. These procedures are the ones I run on client work, written down rather than invented — including the ones where the honest answer is that the fix is not available on your current hosting.