Thought you had the perfect name for a website only to find out someone else already has it?
A good domain name gives your brand recognition and can often help with SEO so getting the right web address is crucial. However, people often assume something will be available with nothing else associated. It’s always worth googling your brand name in the early stages of business development to see what else pops up. You may be surprised.
The problem is not always that there isn’t a similar website name available (think about the plethora of available endings these days .co.uk, .org, .london etc..). It’s because often you don’t want other businesses associated with yours. Think CandyLand Adult Entertainment v. Hasbro Candyland (Yes that was a real legal case – 6 Of the best Domain Name Disputes ).
This also helps to explain why a lot of new internet businesses create ‘made-up’ words to mean a quick google of their brand name is unlikely to bring up anything unrelated to their brand, think Zoopla, Yahoo, Pinterest, Bing or even Google for that matter.
Obviously if you already have an established brand this is not as easy, but there is always slogans, acronyms and other tricks to fall back on.
Once you have your domain registered it’s also important to remember you are not buying a domain name, you are renting it. If you fail to renew, your domain goes back on the market, often to be picked up by someone else (there are digital waiting lists for some domains). So make sure you are renewing or that fees for such are integrated into your web hosting package or web management costs. Wiser Websites for example offers a free domain name registration and renewal with all our website management and cloud hosting packages.
