How to pick the right domain name?

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In This Article

Introduction

In this little wiki article, I’ll be discussing how you can select the right domain name for your Clickfunnels website.

The pros. and cons. of having both a keyword-rich domain name, versus brandable domain name.

What’s a Keyword Rich Domain Name

Well as the name refers to, it’s all keyword rich. So let’s say for instance you are building a business that sells viagra online (I know it’s not the best example, but bear with me I’m trying to make a point here).

Then, in that case, your keyword-rich domain name should look something like “buy-product-online.com” or “buyproductonline.com”.

P.S. having an underscore in your domain name or not, doesn’t hurt your ranking or domain quality. Search engines are smart enough to split domain names into keywords whenever necessary.

Keyword Domain Name Pros.

  1. Easier to index in search engines
    Since the domain name itself is indexable and contains your targeted keywords. Search engines will tend to index it faster and better compared to a meaningless domain name (brand name).

  2. Describes clearly what is it for
    Your customers will be able to understand what your website is about at their first visit, which might lead to building trust faster.

  3. Easier to find
    Keyword domain names, especially long-tail ones. Tend to be free for registration and not taken. So it’s easier to find an untaken domain name for your keywords. due to the fact that the options are endless.

  4. Faster Result (Short Term)
    As I mentioned in #1 & #2, having a keyword-rich domain name, will lead to faster results in the short term. But it’s not guaranteed to have the same success in the long run.

Keyword Domain Name Cons.

  1. Easier to remember by machine, but harder for humans
    Keyword domain names tend to be easier to remember by machines (Search Engines), but really hard to remember by humans.

  2. Longer, and harder to type
    Since your domain name will be longer, it’s going to be harder to type it by users, and it will leave room for misspelling, which leaves room for someone else to register an identical domain name and steal your traffic.

  3. Unbrand-able
    Can you imagine having a brand named “How to buy viagra online”! :joy: for a domain name named, “how-to-buy-viagra-online.com”. That’s really not going to work at all.

  4. Untrustable
    If you are like everyone else in our community (Funnelely), then you’ll mostly be running Facebook Ads to promote your business, and to drive more conversions and sales. If that’s the case, then I’ve run multiple tests on different ads and noticed that short domain names tend to outperform the long keyword ones.
    Even if you are trying to outsmart people to click on a short auto-redirect URL (goo.gl, bitly…etc), then once a visitor lands on your page they’ll get immediately skeptical from taking your offer after seeing that they landed on a long creepy website URL.
    What would you think if you land on this domain name, like I did once

  5. Nonsocial
    Taking into account the last two points (#3 & #4), having a keyword domain name, might be the best SEO option, but it’s the worst when it comes to being social and having a social presence.
    So, if your potential customers are massively active on social media, and you are planning to reach them through social media, then having a long keyword domain name might be a wrong business decision long term.

What Is a Brand Domain Name

Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Quora, are all brand names. If you are willing to build a brand or make something memorable not just a hit and run project. Then a brand name would be your best option. By the way, did you know that all big successful projects have brand names? Brand names tend to be meaningless at the very beginning but are easier to stick in your customer’s mind, thus you’ll end up getting more organic repeat customers, that’s what your ultimate goal should be eventually.

Brand Domain Name Pros.

  1. It’s Brandable
    You can certainly brand Quora, Facebook, Google, or even some random not English word, but it’s almost impossible to brand something like “How-to-buy-a-car-online.net”.

  2. Easier To Remember
    If you’ve invented something like Reddit, once you spend 1$ to acquire a customer to get them to take any action on your website (buy, convert…etc) you don’t need to spend a penny again to get them to do any other action. Only make a point at the first conversion they make when they first land on your website for the first time. and then they’ll come back to you whenever they need more ;). " e-commerce-aholics"

  3. Trustful
    Somewhat people tend to trust random words like “banggood.com” rather than “best-home-appliances.com”, not sure why. But that’s the fact.

  4. Social
    You can easily build an audience for a brand name, as in social media keyword domains tend to be mixed up with general interests. and tend to have many different variants.
    On Facebook, for instance, you can find “Best home appliances”, “Best appliances for home”, “Best House Appliances”…Etc and all other identical variants. While you can’t really find many “Google’s” in there :stuck_out_tongue: hope that explains my point.

  5. Billion-Dollar Brand (Long Term)
    We’ve regularly witness giant brands that only started from garages, being sold for billions of dollars. (LinkedIn 27$ Billion, Instagram 21$ Billion, WhatsApp 2$ Billion…etc). We really never heard of any “Best House Appliances” -ish business being sold or even being featured in the first place on social media and official media (which gets us back to point #4 Social).

Brand Domain Name Cons.

  1. Takes Time
    Google and other search engines, will almost immediately identify your website if you have a long keyword domain name (e.g. “best-home-appliances.com”) but it will take them some time and tons of regular content to let them know about the presence of your brand.

  2. Takes Money
    If you are on a shoestring budget, then I really highly recommend not to start with a brand name, as said above, it takes the time to get organic results. And it takes some regular investment as well, fresh content, Social presence…etc

  3. Harder
    When building a brand name, it’s really hard to focus all your efforts in one direction. (i.e. Content, SEO, Social Media, Press Releases…etc), making it hard for a one-man band, to do it all at once. but remember the majority of the big brands out there started from a garage, It’s doable, but just hard. Takes time and persistent effort.

How To Use Your Domain Name For ClickFunnels

After reading all the above, and have made your mind about which approach suits best your circumstances, then in this section, I’ll be laying down the easy steps to get your domain name registered and activated for ClickFunnels.

  1. Get a Clickfunnels account, if you haven’t already (you can get a 14 days trial using that link).

  2. Register your domain name through your favorite domain name registrar. (If you are new to this then go with GoDaddy, they tend to have better customer support for beginners).

  3. At this step onwards, I’ll assume that your domain name is “example.com”, replace that with your actual domain name instead on each step.

  4. Inside your ClickFunnels account, under ACCOUNT > CUSTOM DOMAINS

  5. Click the “Add New Domain” button

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  6. You’d be presented with two options, “Automatic Setup” and “Advanced Setup”. I’d suggest you go with automatic setup if you are new to Clickfunnels.
    Automatic setup creates a free Cloudflare account for you, and links it to your domains, and does almost all the heavy lifting for you.

  7. That’s it, now go under your sales funnel, and select your domain name to assign it to your funnel steps and pages.

Conclusion

To sum up, here is a little video about the subject, hope you find it insightful:


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Loved it, thanks for sharing. Full of knowledge and information :heart_eyes:

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In that case, I will personally go for a brand name. For two reasons:

  1. Because, I am 1000% sure that my first idea/attempt will be a failure, and the second one a disaster. and while keep trying I might find the one million dollar idea. Then having a brand name like amazon.com, would make it easier for me to try selling different stuff on that links, (books, jewellery, info products…etc). and once I find a winner I will stick to it.

  2. Once I find a winner through the technique described in point #1, then It will be easier to expand it just like amazon did, without being afraid of going out of context. can you imagine selling books on a jewellery site, and vice versa.

  3. After implementing points 1 & 2, I would probably be doing millions of dollars by that time. Then it’s easier to sell it to a bigger company like amazon…etc or getting investors.

That’s my point of view, after reading your article. :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
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Wow Man, you’ve just summarized all those 1 thousand lines above :joy: That’s exactly what it’s all about. thanks for sharing.