Christian Rosenthal
Ramblings of a proud amateur

The challenge of getting a new domain name.

🏃🏻The domain name race

In this day and age, if you want to start a company, initiative, organization, app, etc. you will need a website. Period. And in order to access your website, you’ll need a domain name. If you’ve ever been through this process, you’ll know that every time you try to secure a domain name, unless you are using a made-up word, it’s probably taken…

EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

In case you didn’t know this, the domain name is the address people type in the browser URL bar to visit a website. In other words, it’s like your home address. Without it, it will be harder to find your house.

Securing a domain name has almost become harder than ensuring you can legally use a company name! Not because of the time it takes you to purchase one, but because of the time it takes you to find one that IS ACTUALLY available (and doesn’t cost you $67,283 or more). Yes, this has become part of the adventure of creating a company in the digital age.

Now, what can you do?

There are multiple ways to deal with this conundrum. Some of them will require more effort than others. But this is something you definitely need to solve. As a business owner, this can put a halt on so many things (a branding process, the creation of your website, etc.)

So, now that you are facing this, what do you do?

Try to get it

Of course, this is your first step. Even if you see this dreaded message, wherever you are trying to get your domain name on Godaddy, Namecheap, or whichever supplier you’re using:

⚠ Domain name taken

🤦🏻‍♂️ Face slap.

Before you drop the mike, you may want to do some tests first. Go to any browser window and type your domain name. If you get something like this:

Safari Can't Find the Server

or like this:

I.e. you get a “can’t find the server” message or a webpage with flashy colours and multiple “related links”, you probably have some hope of getting that domain name. Either of these outcomes mean that someone else has already bought the domain (bummer!). But they may be willing to resell it for the right price.

There are many Domain Brokerage services that can help you with this transaction.

Small edits

Ok, ok, you tried it and getting that perfect .com didn’t work out for you. If the exact name you are looking for is not available, maybe a slight variation of it could be.

Change your domain name ending

Commonly called “domain extensions”, technically called Top-Level-Domain or TLD. You can change your domain ending to something more appealing than a traditional .com, the not-so-used .net or a .org if you belong to a non-profit organization or similar.

You can find an up-to-date list of the available TLDs here. This list is maintained by the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, on behalf of ICANN)

There is a plethora of advantages when choosing a new TLD vs. the usual extensions.

  • From the branding perspective, you have a bigger playground to explore. If you are creating a mobile application, you can always use the .app extension. If you are building a travel agency, .travel would work for you. Even if you are a service provide, something like .solutions would be the perfect fit.
  • They will most likely be available. There is a huge number of people that dismiss them because—of course—they are not THE .com, and “people are used to typing .com”. Well, if you compare the ratio of direct traffic vs. organic search or even paid search, the people typing your URL directly will be way lower than people using a search engine like Google or Bing.
  • Uniqueness. You can make your URL memorable (as long as you’re keeping it simple).

But what about SEO???”

👀 That is usually the question that follows the mere suggestion of considering a non-traditional domain name. Good news! According to Google, using a new domain ending won’t hurt your search presence or SEO. It’s worth noting that in the eyes of Google and other search engines, all TLDs are equal. A new TLD won’t affect your search engine ranking, or put it lower in the list of websites that appear based on a search.

Essentially, choosing the proper non-traditional TLD won’t hurt your website, your SEO nor your brand.

Add an action verb or a descriptor

Another technique you can use when your perfect domain name is taken, is using an action word like “go”, “try”, etc. This will provide an alternative URL that may be available. Action verbs like the ones below are commonly used:

  • trymyapp.com instead of myapp.com
  • getbrand.com instead of brand.com
  • shopbrand.com instead of brand.com
  • and so on

Similarly, descriptor words could also work:

  • carbrandmotors.com instead of carbrand.com
  • brandair.com instead of brand.com
  • theproduct.com or myproduct.com instead of product.com

We could go on forever. What’s important is how you manage your brand messaging. If you include your domain name in every communication piece, create awareness campaigns that generate traffic to your domain, you should be fine.

Keep it simple

The bottom line is, whatever you decide to do, KEEP IT SIMPLE. That’s it. The simpler your domain name is, the better. For example, avoid hyphens, numbers, weird spellings. Anything hard to type will be hard to remember.

💀 Rename…?

Wait, what? Your perfect domain name is taken. Should this impact your naming process?

This is one tricky question.

If that perfectly crafted URL is already taken, there may be other companies using that name. If that’s the case, your clients could get confused, or you could even have potential legal issues.

Your domain name should be unique to you, as well as free of any potential infringements.

Google domains

So, should you rename? Should you start the process from scratch. That’s a decision only you can make. With these strategies in mind, it’s up to you to make the best decision for your brand, product, or service. In this day and age, we need to adapt, we need to keep reinventing ourselves and our initiatives to thrive.

Be creative, the rest will follow.

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