We will provide the general information here. You can find more details on how to choose a domain name here.
Domains with hyphens vs non-hyphenated ones
It depends on the domain names available for registration. If the domain name that corresponds with your business is already taken, but the hyphenated one is not, feel free to register the latter one. For example sportscarshop.com vs. sportscar-shop.com. Choosing a domain with a similar name would be a reasonable alternative to hyphens. It might be longer as long as it is easy to remember and relates to your business (e.g. sportscarstore.com)
Please mind, you cannot use hyphens as the third or fourth symbol of the domain name, like this: do--main.com. This restriction is applicable for all domain names and any domain Registrar due to specifics of IDN domain name specifics.
Which domains are indexed faster?
Your domain indexation speed is not influenced by the domain name. In order to speed up the process just add your domain to Google and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Free or paid domain names?
Website visitors tend to consider paid domains more trustworthy. This is why we advise registering paid ones. Search engine rankings are not influenced by the domain price. Users find domains with popular TLDs (like .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, etc.) more comfortable than free SLDs (like .linkpc.net, tv.gg, etc.) and are more eager to visit those.
Regular vs. IDN domain name
We advise going with regular domain names. Internationalized domain names (IDN) are language-specific domain names using Cyrillic, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew or other languages. This makes using IDN domains uncomfortable outside of target country and has a couple of downsides to it:
- sometimes browsers display the original Punycode coding instead of regional language. It still leads to the same webpage but looks confusing. The user gets something like xn--rAndOmletTersanddDigits.xn—sOmemMore. This is how other languages are translated in Punycode for the browsers to be able to work with them;
- not all users expect the address to be in their language (or the language of a specific region).As for indexation, IDN domains are ranked just like any others.
ccTLD vs. gTLD?
Though you can set a region for any domain name in Webmaster Tools, Google recommends to register a domain name which TLD corresponds to the country of target audience. If you are planning to run your business in the USA, a .us domain would be a reasonable choice. Since it will be ranked higher in search queries from the USA than a .com. If you are planning to operate the business worldwide, gTLD would be a better option.
New domain vs. domain with history?
Purchasing a domain that is already registered works well if you are about to launch a brand new website or fully change the content of the old one. It matters if you would like to preserve the website's ranking and you are planning to only add content but not change it. If you made up your mind and are willing to go with a domain that is already registered, make sure to check it’s history.
Regional vs. national domain
The only thing that matters is the target audience. Search results for someone living in New York will show domains .nyc, ny.us, new-york.ny.us that are ranked higher than the others. But if you plan on running business worldwide, it is better to go with national or even generic TLD.
Note! Vast majority of ccTLDs, including the regional ones, have specific registration requirements. Those might be: providing passport and contact details, being a citizen or resident, having the business registered in a specific city/region/state, etc.
If you have any questions, you are welcome to leave them in the comment section below and our experts will answer them as soon as possible. We will add frequently asked questions and answers to those to this article.
