If you are about to start a new roofing company or want to promote your already established business online, setting up a professional website is one of the key elements in your digital marketing strategy. In most cases, this includes coming up with a fresh domain name, which is likely going to have a great impact on how well your business will be received by your prospective clients.
What To Keep In Mind When Choosing A Domain Name for Your Roofing Company Website
A domain name can positively or negatively influence click-through rates (CTRs) for traffic coming from the search engine results pages. It also has an impact on how easy it is for you to build backlinks, company branding, and advertising in terms of costs per click. In short, choosing a domain name for your roofing company website is not something that should be taken lightly.
These are the factors to take into account in the decision making process:
.com or Country-Specific Domains
.com is the primary and therefore best TLD (top-level domain) you can possibly choose, assuming that your roofing company is based in the United States. A .net, .info, or any other domain ending is harder for users to recognize and does not create the same level of trust. An exception are commonly used country specific top-level domains, so for example .ca for businesses in Canada or .co.uk for businesses in the UK, which have equal value.
Brandability
Simply put, a brandable domain name suggests that there is a real brand behind it. To give you a better idea of what I’m talking about:
- sacramento-roofing-company.com clearly is a non-branded domain.
- com is brandable. Furthermore, it’s memorable and it’s obvious that your business has something to do with roofing, but at the same time it will make you stand out from your competition.
Brandability is especially important for referral (word-of-mouth) marketing.
Short & Memorable
Make sure to go with a short and memorable domain name. This also helps with getting more likes and shares on social media.
Above that, stay away from numbers and hyphens.
Easy To Say And Write
A short domain name is easier to say and write than a long one. Chances are that people will misspell an overly complicated name, which will only harm your business.
Keywords?
According to Moz, search engines still rely on domain names as a ranking factor. However, if you decide to include your main keyword in it, you will only see a slight benefit, if any.
Here is a quote from Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz, that pretty much hits the nail on the head:
“If you can get a keyword mention in your domain name that helps make it obvious what you’re website is about, go for it. But if you’re trying to secure a keyword rich or a keyword targeted domain, I would stay away from those in 2017.” (source)
And what already applied in 2017, applies even more in 2018 and onward.
Thinking Big
You might think about including your roofing specialty, location, or both in your domain name, such as albanycedarroofing.com. The problem here is: What do you do when you want to expand your business and offer not only more services, but offer them in other cities, too? Are you going to build a second website and a third one after that?
As you can see, it’s never too early to start thinking big.
Trademark Infringements
A trademark owner can sue you for infringements, if your domain name can be confused with his trademark. It’s always best to choose a domain name where you can be 100 percent certain that there are no risks involved. If in doubt, better take the safe route and double check with a specialized attorney.
Your Own Name
Including your own name or name initials might be worth a consideration. alexjohnsonroofing.com or ajroofing.com are easy to memorize and have a brandable character for sure.
All the Good Names Already Taken?
You’ve dived deep into your pool of creativity and came up with an awesome domain name, only to find out that it’s not available anymore. In this case you shouldn’t really hesitate to use a different TLD or add a prefix or suffix and try again. Simply put, don’t overcomplicate things.
Common prefixes:
- the
- AAA
- best
Common suffixes:
- site
- pro
- net
To check whether or not a domain name is still available, visit any domain registrar such as godaddy.com and conduct a quick search. Another tool we love to find domain names is called Bust-A-Name where you can quickly add some words and phrases, and the tool will come up with variations that might work for you and also automatically checks if they’re available or not. We’ve often uncovered some great sounding domain names using this tool, though we’ve also had times where it said a domain was available but actually wasn’t.
A Quick Word On Domain History
It is possible that a domain name was abused by a previous owner in the past, which means that Google might have penalized it. If that’s the case, re-indexing and ranking this particular domain can turn out to be very difficult.
To eliminate this potential risk, it’s always worth the effort to check a domain’s history. To do that, first of all, visit the Wayback Machine and enter your domain name in the search bar to see if anything comes up.
The Wayback Machine on the Internet Archive can help you determine what your domain was used for before you buy it.
We would also recommend you to search for the domain name in Google. If the domain indeed has a history, it’s time for a more thorough research, which you can learn more about here, or go with a different domain.
Don’t Overthink It
With all that, we recommend you don’t overthink it to the point that it keeps you from getting started! The sooner you grab your domain, the sooner you secure it from someone else registering it, and the sooner you can get started marketing your new branding!
Got questions? Need advice? Contact us, we’re here to help! We offer free consultations to all roofing companies looking to increase their online visibility.