Best Practices for Domain Registration
Choosing the right registrars, TLDs and domain names can affect how your network performs. In this article we'll discuss what we've found to work best.
Domain Names
- Avoid long names, "localhoneyhouse.com" is better than "australianhoneydirecttoyou.com"
- Avoid dashes unless necessary, "localhoneyhouse.com" is better than "local-honey-house.com"
- Consider top-level, multi-niche domains instead of hyper-focused domain names — for example, maybe "localbiz.com" is better than "plumbersnewyork.com" and adding a subdomain, such as "plumbingny.localbiz.com"
- Avoid expletives or offensive words
TLDs
Our preference, in order:
- .com
- .net
That's the (short) list. Avoid .xyz or other spammy TLDs — it's always worth it to invest in a .com if you can, otherwise a .net.
Registrars
When choosing a domain registrar, WHOIS Privacy is a requirement. Preferably for free, as all WHOIS Privacy should be free anyway!
Here's a few we use internally and for Managed Services: