Choosing the Best Possible SG Domain Name for your Website or Business
Choosing the best possible SG domain name for your website or business is absolutely critical. Your domain name deserves hours, and maybe days, of thought, and it’s no exaggeration, in some circumstances, making the incorrect choice can break a business. In short: Choosing a domain name is something every website owner has to ensure they get right — ideally before they start doing anything else, and particularly if the web site is going to be serving a commercial purpose.
Since we are a Singapore Web Hosting Company and we do SG domain registration, we are no strangers to domain names. In fact, we’ve seen numerous individuals and businesses registering SG domain name without giving it much thought, which is why we decided to write this article.
Let’s go in-depth on things to think about when choosing your ideal SG domain name — in other words, the way to actually set about choosing! Here are 8 essential tips for selecting and registering an SG domain name (in no particular order).
Choose a Brandable SG Domain Name
We all know that branding is crucial to long-term success, but what exactly makes a website name brandable? There are many factors that get into play here, but the foremost important ones are as follows:
A brandable name has no specific meaning (eg ‘YouTube’ isn’t a word, ‘Google’ isn’t one either).
It’s unique – your competitor doesn’t use anything similar.
It’s easy to memorise – not too wordy, no complex vowel combinations.
It’s easy to pronounce and dictate over the phone.
It sounds trustworthy – some names are often a touch shady by definition, as an example, WinTheLotteryToday.sg could also be too bold, but LotteriIo.sg sounds way better.
To make the process easier, you’ll need to experiment with some combinations of actual words and random suffixes, as I did with the LotteriIo.sg example above. the main goal here is to make it possible for the name to create brand value over time.
In other words, as much as possible, try ensuring the name features a good ring to it. It should be fun to mention aloud, and not difficult to memorize immediately. consider the likes of Uber: It’s short and snappy, and there’s no confusion on the way to spell it – even when mentioned it during a conversation.
Keep It Short and Simple, yet Predictable
So, we already talked about brand-ability (if that’s a word), but there are also some other, more general, characteristics of a top-quality name. The top four being:
short – preferably with fewer than 15 characters, excluding the .SG
simple – no hyphens, no underscores, no complicated words as a part of the domain, or the other punctuation
just words – avoid using numbers unless absolutely necessary (for example, if it’s a part of your brand, like 9gag.com)
predictable – no weird spellings (for example, if your name is Myke and you would like to make it a part of your domain — like MykeShop.com – most people will mistype it as MikeShop.com.
Get SG Domain name Ideas using a Thesaurus
Okay, so in spite of what I say about picking a domain name that’s brandable, simple, features a good ring to it, is simple to memorize, then on then forth, the actual fact of the matter is that coming up with a really good name is tough.
Sometimes, you’ll easily undergo tens of various terms before you agree on a perfect one, while other times nothing will seem adequate. in this case, Thesaurus.com can often be the secret weapon in your arsenal.
The site will assist you to find synonyms and also provide quick definitions to assist you to not make a silly mistake by building your domain name around a word with a meaning you’ve misunderstood.
Note: As I discussed above, it’s not advisable to only go with a regular, dictionary word as your name, even though it comes from a thesaurus. Always add some modifiers to your domain name, or turn it into something original by changing a couple of letters here and there.
Choose a Domain Name that you can Legally Own
Infringing on a trademark can mean a very bad day. And, while I know that hardly anyone registers a domain name with the sole purpose of infringing on anything, those things do happen every once in a while.
Therefore, as a rule of thumb, whenever you’ve got a great domain name idea and you’re almost about to register it, simply google the name and look through all of the first and second page results. What you’re searching for are businesses that already use this name and operate in a very similar niche or market.
If you discover anything, you likely got to pick another domain name.
Don’t Worry too much If Your Perfect Domain name Is Taken and Can’t Be Acquired
Okay, as much as domain names do matter, and having the proper one can mean the world to you, if it’s unavailable or the price is simply too high, don’t worry too much.
First of all, something that’s more important than anything, even more than the name itself, is to really get the concept behind your website or business right. If you dedicate yourself to executing that idea, the lack of that ‘perfect domain name’ won’t hold you back.
Secondly, domain names can be changed afterwards. even if you don’t have the right domain today, you will be able to always get it later, and just redirect your website to it.
For example, that is what Sumo did, not that long ago. The name they started with was sumome.com, but then, after a short time, once they got enough funding, they bought the domain they really wanted, sumo.com. In their case, that domain switch was very expensive. Their new sumo.com domain actually cost $1.5 million. But don’t worry, yours doesn’t need to be this expensive.
Check the Domain History using Wayback Machine
Note: This one is worth checking even though you’re getting, what you think that is, a brand new domain name. In some cases, the domain name you’re trying to register may have already been registered in the past but was then abandoned by the owner. It’s still a good idea to have a look at what was on it.
There are a few ways in which you’ll be able to research a domain name’s history. Amongst the more popular ones, and one that’s also within anyone’s reach involves using Wayback Machine.
This one of a kind tool, allows you to ‘go back to the future’, so to say, and have a look at how every website used to look in the past.
When I say ‘every website’, it’s not actually every website. But you’ll be able to expect to search out most websites that had any noticeable traffic at any point in time. In our case, doing a check via Wayback Machine allows us to examine whether the domain we’re interested about has ever been used for anything significant, and, if so, whether it had been all ‘clean’ or not.
For example, if you search our website, https://webhostsg.net, you’ll get records dating back to 2012 (exactly the year we started the business):
Once you click on any of the records, you get to see a snapshot of the site in the past. Nice right?
Register The Corresponding Social Media Handles
Social media is vital lately, whether we love it or not.
The average web-connected human spends one hour on Facebook a day, and, in total, Facebook gets 2 billion visits a month. That’s BILLION.
What I’m trying to say is: People are far more likely to see what’s happening with your brand on Facebook than by actually visiting your website. this is often just one of the reasons why you absolutely need to have your professional profiles found out on the most popular social media sites.
Whenever possible, get identical handles as your domain name. If it is taken, be creative and use some suffixes or prefixes. Some options: now, daily, HQ, get, app. for instance, my fictional LotteriIo.sg brand could pass as LotteriIoHQ or LotteriIoNOW on Twitter.
Always Register Your domain name Yourself
It’s a very good idea to not let anyone else (such as an agency or web designers) register a domain name for you. even if it makes think more convenient (since some other person does all the work), it can result in trouble later on.
If somebody else registers the domain, you’re giving them a hold over you and your website. If you ever want to move off from their services, you’ll encounter trouble in terms of them not being too wanting to transfer the domain over to you and provide you with full control of it.
Just to name some of the bad things which can happen: they will take an awfully long time to complete the transfer, they’ll try and extort some fees from you to do that, or they will decline completely (based on some fine print in your initial agreement).
Plus, perhaps most significantly, if the agency/person goes bankrupt or loses access to the domain registrar for whatever reason, you may lose your domain name entirely.
Always register your domains on your own. It’s not that difficult anyway. Be wary of these web host that entice you with FREE Domain, more often than not, the free domain will not be registered under your name/business. Here’s our step-by-step guide.
Let’s Go and get Your SG Domain Name!
Whew, okay, that was a great deal of reading! Still, I don’t want this list to be intimidating. Even reading through it only once then noting down the foremost important takeaways will provide you with quite enough insight to be ready to obtain your perfect domain name and do so safely.
Just to assist you out, here’s a cut-out-and-keep version of everything that’s been said above:
- Choose a Brand-able SG Domain Name
- Keep It Short and Simple, yet Predictable
- Get SG Domain name Ideas using a Thesaurus
- Choose a Domain Name that you can Legally Own
- Don’t Worry too much If Your Perfect Domain name Is Taken and Can’t Be Acquired
- Check the Domain History using Wayback Machine
- Register The Corresponding Social Media Handles
- Always Register Your domain name Yourself
Ready to register that perfect SG domain name or just need to see if that domain you have in mind is available? Head over to our Domain Registration Page enter in your desired SG Domain Name and click search.
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