Should My Domain Name Be My Name?
So we decided to start a blog, business, or just a presence online, and we are on fire so excited and motivated to create great content. But we stuck with a domain name selection. What names to choose? Maybe my name?
There are many advantages to using your name as a domain name, but there are also disadvantages to why it’s not so great idea.
Should My Domain Name Be My Name?
The Answer to that is Yes and No. It’s all depends on what you’re planning to do with that domain name and your website in the future. If you’re planning to keep it then yes it’s a great idea.
But if you’re planning to sell your domain name or website in the future, then No, it’s not a good idea.
So let get deeper into the subject and let’s try to understand what’s are the benefits and downsides of creating a domain name by my name.
Pros using your name as a domain name:
Personal Branding:
You and your name stand us brand, your name will be recognized even if people forget your website name they will remember your name and can type it in google to find your website.
You will brand yourself as an expert in your field, it will tell that you are serious, and you know what you’re saying. It will be easier for people to find you online, names are more memorable and easy to remember.
Availability:
It’s your name, so it’s available to register our domain name. These days it is pretty hard to come up with a great-sounding domain name. All good domain names are taken, so you may spend hours or even days to come up with a good-sounding domain name that is available.
Your name not only will be available but it also increases your confidence in yourself, people feel more connected with real people instead of cold name corporations or brands, and what could be better than a real live person whom they can trust.
Cons using your name as a domain name:
Hard To Sell:
One of the main reasons is a bad idea to use your name as a domain name is that it would be harder to sell to someone else. A mean, what company, brand, or another person would like to own a domain name with someone else name in it?
None of them, so it is pretty hard to convince anyone to buy it, especially if you spend a lot of time and resources building your website and in the end, no one is interested to buy it, maybe only if you sell it very cheap and lose money and time spent building it.
Hard To Know Meaning:
Your name may sound great and cool, but it’s telling nothing to people. For example, John.com what’s site is about? What’s the meaning behind this? Something different if it brands for example Coca-Cola which tells me it’s a drink company.
So basically your name tells me nothing about the site or business you run. It’s hard for me to know what that site does or represents compared to the Coca-Cola name which tells me a lot because the brand is on the market for a long period.
So in the end it is up to you to make the decision do you go with a personal domain name and grow us a business online, or do you want to sell in the future and focus attention on something else. But if we decide to go with our domain name, how to choose one?
What Is a Good Personal Domain Name?
A personal domain name is a website address that you own, control, and used to represent yourself online. It can be your name or any other name or word that you choose to represent your business online.
- You can choose your name as a domain name, it’s available, it’s easy to remember and it’s can become your brand in the future.
- You can choose your business name, any way you decide to call your business brand you can choose a domain name if it’s available.
- Or you can choose a name with a keyword included representing your business that people may search on Google.
So in the end it’s you have to decide on what domain name to choose. Is it your name, business name, or any other word that is similar to the business you’re planning to run?
Just take time and think about what you’re planning to do in the future with that domain name and what type of website you’re planning to create.
So we decided on a domain name great, but now another question coming to play. How long domain name supposed to be, how many characters it should have?
How Long Should My Domain Name Be?
The generally accepted rule is to aim for a domain name with 7 -13 characters long, that’s the so-called golden spot. But of course, there is nothing wrong with longer or shorter domain names.
The long domain names are not so bad they might just be difficult to remember or misspell when typing. So it’s beneficial to avoid using long domain names.
It should be easy to pronounce and easy to type. There is nothing worse than someone who misses type domain name and can’t find your website.
Try to avoid Hyphens, Numbers, and Dashes which only makes pronunciation much harder and more confusing.
Try using niche keywords when choosing a domain name for your website, for example, if your website is all about computers try to incorporate words used in a computer environment, software, electronic, data processor, tech, and many similar ones.
Can you imagine choosing the domain name tomatosalsa.com for a computer site? So u understand me trying to choose domain name words similar to website purpose.
Try to avoid brand names or trademarks used by other companies that can make you a lot of legal problems. Simplicity is the key, simple words are much easier to remember and type accurately.
In the end, I can say don’t try to look for a perfect name because you might wait days or even months. Try to go with something catchy, easy to understand and type, something that represents your website, and it’s easy to remember.
Does Domain Name Affect SEO?
An important question for lots of bloggers who wanna rank in SEO. The Answer to that question is NO, domain names don’t affect SEO anymore and I explain to you why exactly so stay with me.
Ten years ago it was beneficial to get an exact match domain name for whatever type of topic you were interested in. For example, if you’re going to write a blog about weight loss and your domain name was weightloss.com you are potentially ranked very high for keywords because Google will say that your site and domain name are exactly about weight loss.
So lots of people start to abuse that. And so Google in 2012 come with an exact match domain update, that penalize sites that don’t have rich content around the domain name.
So if you decide to go for the exact match domain name you better have superb content on your website, because if you don’t google will penalize your site, and you fall in ranking.
With new algorithm update domain names for SEO is not as important as they youse to be.
So don’t worry about your domain name.
Make sure that your domain name is short, memorable, easy to pronounce, don’t use numbers or any special characters, don’t use dashes or words that could be misspelled easily. Choose a domain name that fits with you, it could have a keyword that involves the topic, but it’s not so important anymore.
Focus more on writing great informational content that can help people solve their problems rather than on the domain name itself. I wish you good luck and success in your projects.