A domain name is one of the smallest decisions in setting up a business and one of the ones you live with longest. It is worth a few minutes of thought to choose well and, just as importantly, to make sure it ends up genuinely yours.
What makes a good domain
- Short and easy to say. If you have to spell it out on the phone, it is working against you.
- Your business name over a keyword. A name is memorable and yours; a keyword domain looks dated and rarely helps rankings any more.
- No hyphens or numbers if you can help it. They get lost when a name is spoken aloud.
- A sensible ending. For most UK businesses that is .co.uk or .com.
.co.uk, .com, or something else
For a business trading mainly in the UK, .co.uk is trusted and exactly what people expect. A .com suits you if you trade nationally or abroad, and where the budget allows it is worth owning both and redirecting one to the other so nobody lands on the wrong version. The newer novelty endings can work for a brand with a reason to use one, but for most businesses they raise a small question mark that a plain .co.uk never does.
What it costs, and owning it properly
A standard domain is roughly £10 to £20 a year. The thing to watch is not the price but the ownership. Register it in your own or your company name, in an account you can log into, and keep the renewal from lapsing. Too many businesses discover the domain was registered in a designer or developer account and was never really theirs, which is the trap we cover in who owns your website.
The short version. Pick a short, sayable domain built on your business name, take .co.uk for a UK business or .com if you reach wider, expect to pay £10 to £20 a year, and register it in your own name so it is genuinely yours.
Setting up a new site and not sure where to start, see how we build sites or start a project.
