The Complete Guide to Choosing the Perfect Domain Name

One of the most important choices you’ll ever make for your business is choosing a domain. A domain is your website address (like www.yoursitehere.com), but it’s also so much more. Join us as we dig into the why and how, a bit of history, and most importantly – the key rules for choosing a winning domain. Plenty of brands pour serious focus and investment into their logo and branding, which are of course important and critical, but they overlook one small point: your logo is going to get refreshed and swapped out every few years, while a good domain usually stays with you for the entire life of the business.

What should the domain name be?

There are two main approaches to naming a domain. The first holds that the brand is the center, and the domain name should be the brand name, clean, exact, correct, and easy to spell. A domain like that is memorable and reinforces the brand name (like www.yourbrandname.com). This approach suits large brands especially well, or brands aspiring to become one.

The second approach holds that it’s worth working a keyword into the domain name that helps visitors understand the site is relevant to a specific field. Another advantage: that kind of keyword helps with organic search promotion. This is a very common approach in certain fields – jewelry, for example – but less right or suitable for others.

Trust is the name of the game

After browsing tens of thousands of websites over the years, our subconscious has learned to react strongly to domain names and URLs. Our brains can practically shout at us the moment a site looks suspicious, solid, or trustworthy – based on the domain alone. Building trust through your domain name is quite literally the name of the game, and we’ll walk through a range of considerations and reasons later in this article. One small tip: we’re not really in favor of using numbers in a domain name. There are exceptions (Yad2, for instance, landed on a great domain), but numbers generally signal a lack of credibility and can bring to mind phishing sites and other shady corners of the web. That’s not a neighborhood you want your site associated with.

Already picked a name? Choosing the right extension

True, the topic of extensions is up for debate, and there’s a range of approaches and opinions out there. Still, here are a few important points:

If around 95% of your activity and revenue is in Israel, we strongly recommend a .CO.IL extension. Israeli audiences and search engines embrace this extension warmly, and it signals local relevance, credibility, and a connection to the Israeli market. If you’re active in other countries, it’s worth consulting an expert to review the market and the relevant extension.

Very important: avoid unfamiliar-looking extensions entirely. Would you buy clothes online from a store at SHOPCENTER.LV? By the way, that’s exactly why a .CO.IL domain isn’t marketable to an American audience, for instance — to them, it’s an unfamiliar, foreign, and suspicious extension.

New extensions – plenty of people argue the new extensions are great for both visitors and search engines, but in most cases, we don’t really recommend them. We’ve taken on clients with extensions like .TODAY and .SHOP, and right after switching them to a proper extension (.CO.IL or .COM), the site’s Google results and performance improved. That said, there is a strong trend toward .IO extensions gaining traction in the innovation and tech world, with hundreds of ventures finding meteoric success under that extension. .CO has also become increasingly common and can deliver good results too. So if you’re a startup, it’s fine to think outside the box. If you’re a business, we recommend sticking with what works.

Hebrew-script extensions – you can buy one just to be safe, in case it becomes a hit in 10 years. At this stage, we’re against using a Hebrew-script domain, for a range of reasons, chief among them that a Hebrew domain or URL turns into gibberish when shared or copied. The result looks terrible across your various digital assets and the sharing tools critical to your success.

Other extensions, like .NET, are less recommended in our view. An interesting story from the early internet days: .NET domains used to be significantly cheaper than .COM ones, and in visitors’ eyes, non-.COM domains were seen as less trustworthy – and we’d guess, correspondingly, in search engines’ eyes too. A small difference that created a reputation gap that persists to this day. How would you feel browsing GOOGLE.NET, or CNN.NET? Just the look of it already creates a different feeling for us as consumers. And don’t even get us started on .BIZ – better we don’t tell you what we think of it.

The minus is a minus

There are exceptions, but generally, a hyphen (-), also known as a dash, is flatly a disadvantage when it comes to domains.

Why? First, it’s awkward to read a domain aloud over the phone or in conversation, having to mention and explain the hyphen. It doesn’t work on radio, it’s not catchy, and it’s not memorable. In terms of connotation and association, in marketing we always favor the positive and steer clear of a negative minus sign sitting inside a domain name. A quick thought experiment: how well do you think a site called FACE-BOOK.COM or YAD-2.CO.IL would have done? The feeling they create is undoubtedly worse.

On the other hand, from a practical standpoint, we do sometimes choose domains with a hyphen – for reasons of availability, matching the brand name, or an awkward letter combination that makes the domain hard to read without one. There are plenty of very successful sites that came a long way even with a small hyphen in the middle of the address. It’s not a requirement for success, but avoiding it when you can is recommended.

Length does matter

Short domains are good. They signal credibility. They signal you got there first. If you want a short domain, you’re more than welcome to consult with us or another expert to track down an available 3-letter domain. That kind of domain works especially well for initials. It’s worth remembering that an unusually long domain won’t be memorable and will be hard to type, so short and precise usually gets the job done. By the way, manually typing a web address into a browser is still common, and still matters.

Should a new brand or business name factor in domain availability?

Absolutely. Today, digital makes up the vast majority of the marketing budget, at least in most cases. Domain availability can genuinely shape your next business name. Plenty of businesses buy up an already-taken domain that’s listed for sale. It’s a somewhat sensitive process, and we’re here to guide you through it if needed. It’s not always worth spending thousands of shekels acquiring an existing domain if you can buy a new one for tens of shekels. But sometimes, with the right handling and precise negotiation, it’s worth investing in a quality premium domain that’s up for sale.

Another new trend we’ve noticed in recent years: businesses, brands, and ventures choosing entirely new words upfront – whether invented outright, or a blend of two existing words – to create a term that’s easy to remember, fully available as a domain in the desired extension, and easier to index on Google. As time goes on, it gets harder to think of strong, available brand names, and this method is highly recommended and delivers excellent results.

Where do you buy one, how many, and how?

First, it’s important to distinguish between buying a domain and using a domain. Without question, it’s worth buying more than one domain. For example, if your domain is available both as .COM and .CO.IL, grab both without a second thought. The cost is just a few dozen shekels a year. Buying multiple domains gives you more flexibility down the road, but your main site should run on one leading, strong domain.

Where do you buy? We strongly recommend LiveDNS.co.il — excellent service, Hebrew-language support, reliable, convenient, and efficient. You might find domains at a lower price elsewhere, but saving a few shekels a year can come at the cost of technical issues, site outages, and other headaches.

A good domain obviously isn’t the only, or even the main, factor in a business’s success, but a well-chosen domain can break through barriers and provide excellent ground conditions for growth and effective work. By the way, we don’t always recommend rushing to change the domain name of an already-active site – it’s a fairly complex process.

To sum up, we’re not saying you should run off and change your domain name right after reading this article – but the next time you’re a moment away from choosing a new one, keep everything above in mind, and feel free to consult with us. We’d love to help.