Choosing a domain name is important for every business; how much more when you want to choose a name for a niche site like a teens’ website.
A domain name is part of your brand. It is the first point of contact visitors have with your teen’s business and the content of the site. You can as well call it the ‘online company name’ of your business.
With a teen’s business, the right domain name can attract your target audience even before they visit your website.
Things to Consider When Picking a Domain Name
You can choose the right name for your site if you know all the necessary tips to help you pick it. Use the following questions as a guide when choosing a domain name.
Should I add keywords?
There has been a long-standing debate on the addition of keywords to a domain name. Some blogging experts advocate that your site name should have a keyword or two. Adding teens to your domain name will help people immediately identify the purpose of the site. You can also add something that has to do with the service or product you’re offering. It will quickly get your targeted audience to your website and help you with niche marketing.
For example, footballcamp.com and americanyouthfootball.com are niche specific and have the keyword needed to draw people in. On the other hand, don’t have a keyword stuffed domain or add so many keywords to the name that it becomes clunky and too long. Also, don’t add keywords that narrow down the purpose of the site so much that it is difficult to expand what you can do with the site.
Your site should not be too sub-niche or keyword specific. Other SEO experts believe that you shouldn’t add a keyword to your domain name. Make it unique and non-generic. That way, you can continuously use the name even if you change your mind on what you offer and your target audience.
The content of your website is more important when it comes to ranking on Google. So, if you don’t want to add a keyword, don’t bother about how well your site will rank. Write good content. Follow white hat search engine optimization rules. And you’re good to go. However, you might have to work a bit harder through content creation on your site and social media marketing to create brand awareness and entrench your site’s name in the mind of your target audience.
How brandable is the name?
Branding ability is one of the most important things to consider when generating a domain name. Why should you care about creating a brandable website? Google prefers websites centered on a brand. Let’s face it; a site with a brand will be more careful about the kind of content it creates. It would want to create high quality, lasting content for site visitors and customers. Google identifies websites that are brands by checking for the brand signal. It ranks these sites higher than generic sites (websites without brands).
Of course, you want to rank highly in the search engine results page. Therefore, your first step to building brand signal is making sure your domain name is brandable. It can either be the name of your company or non-profit organization for teens, or it has the potential of being built into a brand.
Also, every brand has a mood to convey. It can be educational, fun, sporty, a game site or a site for teen girls. Your domain name should showcase the image and mood you want to portray. For instance, when you hear the name funbrain.com, you know that the site is an educational site that presents its teaching in a fun and acceptable way.
Aside from that, it is vital that people remember your website. A brandable name usually sounds more original and sticks to the memory. With it, your site has the potential to last long into the future and you can creatively expand your brand through the name it has.
Having a brandable name will ensure you can create a memorable online presence, create brand awareness on social media and offline and get that traffic you need.
What is the ideal length?
How long should your domain name be? Is domain name length important? The shorter and catchier it is, the better. While a long-phrase domain name works in some cases, remember you are targeting teens who are used to shorter names like snapchat.com. Make sure your site has from 1-3 words.
Each word should not be so long either. It should have a few syllables. Snapchat is basically two syllables even though it has two words. Websites are not only marketed online. They can be marketed through word of mouth online. A shorter site name with few syllables will be easier to recall
How memorable is the site name?
Make your website name more memorable, avoid certain mistakes. One of them is punctuation in a domain name. You might think that pop.fashion is a great name but when it becomes pop.fashion.com, it creates a problem. Adding punctuation marks like hyphen and underscore can also lead to problems. Imagine telling a person that your site’s name is pop-fashion.com or pop_fashion.com
That will lead to lots of misspellings. Some people will write popfashion.com; others will mistakenly write other punctuation marks in place of the underscore in pop_fashion.
The domain name will also be harder to remember. When they’ve typed in popfashion.com in the browser and it’s not your site that comes up, they have to think about what’s in the middle of the two words, if they remember that there’s punctuation there.
Another mistake is adding numbers to your site’s name. How many big-brand websites have numbers in their domain name?
The answer is, None.
Having numbers in your site’s name make it look less professional, less memorable and less brandable. Going with the example above, popfashion.com is a great name for branding. Onepopfashion.com? Not so much. Adding numbers also lead to confusion for site visitors and customers. Is the domain name onepopfashion.com or 1popfashion.com?
Do you see what I did there? People are not going to be sure if they should write the number in letters or as a number.
Avoid numbers in your domain name. Finally, ensure the numbers are not spelled in a weird way. That’s another mistake that can lead to loss of potential site visitors. The name should not have words that are slang, spelled in a strange or different way, or isn’t used in normal English. If you’ve decided your site should have an international outreach, don’t add area-specific words that will confuse people from other countries in your website name. On the other hand, you can add some common country-specific English words or teen slang to your domain name if your site is geo-targeted.
What tools should I use in picking my domain name?
Teens like names that are catchy, trendy and unique. They want to identify with something they can make their own. In that case, it might be difficult to create a good domain name without help. You may contact professionals like this website to help you with that.
Another option is to use specific tools and methods that will help you generate the best domain name possible. At this point, you should have already decided the purpose and mood of your site. You should know if creating the site is a summer project or you want it to last for a few years.
If you’ve not yet come up with a name, the next phase is to brainstorm. Write down or type out words and phrases that are aligned to the purpose of your site. Think about all you want your site to do and be. Then, write down any word that comes to you. It doesn’t matter if you like the word or not, just write it down. You never know what word combination you’ll use it for later on.
Besides, brainstorming will get your creative juices flowing. You might not get the right word at that moment, but it can pop into your mind when you’re least expecting. If you’re still not satisfied, use a thesaurus. You can right-click the words you’ve written down and check for the synonyms if you typed them in Word, or you can check for the synonyms online. Pick out all the synonyms you get. You can go as far as searching for the synonyms of the synonyms until you get a satisfactory site name.
If that’s still not enough, use a domain name generator. There are several domain name generating software online. Simply Google ‘Top ten domain name generators’ and pick one out of the best.
Input the words you have so far and let the software give you suggestions. Keep doing this until you get a suitable name. Sort through the names and pick the best ones for your site.
Viola, you have a domain name.
Make sure you check the availability of the domain name after this process. If it’s available for sales, snatch it up immediately. Ideas are not person specific, and somebody might want to buy that same name. Once you buy it, nobody else can. If it’s not available, start the process again. Look for a new set of names or pick another name from the domain name generator.
Picking a domain name for your teen site can be daunting, but once it’s done right you increase how memorable, marketable and brandable your site is.