SEO Basics: Choose a Good Domain

SEO starts by choosing a good domain. If you want a website for your business, the very first step is to choose a good domain.

What is the best method for choosing a domain name? Register your business name or activity as a domain? Maybe a good keyword for your business is a good choice? Does the domain end (TLD) matter? Is there an SEO-friendly domain at all? You will get answers to all your questions in this blog post.

How is a domain built?

If you have a website then you know what a domain is. A domain is an easy-to-remember name for people that makes it easy to navigate on web. The domain consists of two parts, the second level and the top-level domain (TLD).

Second level domain, i.e. the domain name itself
The second-level domain is what everyone pays the most attention to when choosing a domain. If your goal is to get people to remember your business name or brand, it’s a good idea to choose a domain name accordingly. In the case of lanisys.ca, ‘lanisys’ is the second-level domain name. It is a brand name and also the name of our company, which was an obvious choice on our part.

Top-level domain is, the domain ending
The top-level domain is the ending or extension of the domain. Also called a TLD, it is an acronym derived from Top Level Domain. In the case of lanisys.ca, this is ‘.ca’.

SEO basics, domain name selection

If you choose the right domain, you can help SEO your website

What to look for when choosing a domain name?
Once you have decided that you want a website, start by checking that the name you want to register is available. You can do this in under the our domain occupancy finder.

The domain should be associated with your business
A domain name can reflect your business or a featured service you provide to your customers. Example: hairdressing.ca

You can also choose a keyword or keyword phrase that is relevant to your service. For example, if you specialize in cleaning airbnb apartments, airbnbcleaning.ca is a great choice.

Register your company name or your own brand!
If you are starting a business now, choose a company name that is easy to remember as a domain name. Many large companies have registered their own company names or brand names as domains. This is a important step if you want your company or brand name to be remembered. This has been chosen by Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft, and so has LaniSys Hosting.

If you already have an offline business whose name is known to many, register it as a domain. On the other hand, this strengthens the name of your company in the online space as well. Both users and Google love easy-to-remember company and brand names. Also, your customers don’t even have to remember a new name when they search for your website on the internet.

Include location
If your activity is limited to a specific province or city, it’s a good idea to include the location in your domain name. For example, if you run a cleaning company in Montréal, include the name ‘montreal’ in your domain name.

Be original
If you decide to register a domain related to your business, do a little preliminary research. How many domain names like yours are thrown out by the search engine? If you want to enter a market where all the existing versions of a word have already been registered, you may want to approach from a different direction. In this case, a good choice is the company name itself or a combo of the company name and activity.

Under no circumstances should you try to register someone else’s company name or brand name in the belief that you will have more hits. This is unethical and could lead to legal and even trademark disputes.

Generic domain suffixes
This category includes .com, .net, .org, .icu and more popular suffixes. The vast majority of websites on the Internet have this extension. They are easy to recognize and international.

Generic domain extensions can be registered by anyone in the world. Their registration is not geographically limited and does not target any countries.

Country code-specific ending
The advantage of country code-specific domain endings is that users can immediately see the country in which your business operates. They also know that you are serving in that country. This type of extension also helps Google geo-target your page (‘geotargeting’). This is perhaps the most important difference between the two extensions. The country code-specific ending is a clear indication to both search engines and users of where you are doing your business.

The bonus is that users in that country will have more confidence in your site. So if your business is present in more than one country, it’s a good idea to register your domain with each country ending in its own. For example Canadian shoppers are 4 times more likely to choose .ca. Don’t forget that since 2014 you can register a .quebec domain as well.