Bad Domain Names: What Types of Domain Names Should You Avoid Using?

Web Domain Names Visualized

There are well over 1.7 billion websites on the internet. And that number is growing every single day as more people set up sites for themselves and their businesses.

This can make it difficult to figure out a good domain name when you’re trying to come up with one. Far too often, people end up settling on bad domain names that fail to set their websites up to be successful.

If you’re preparing to set up a website sometime soon, steer clear of coming up with one of the many bad domain names and choose something that will put your site in a position to succeed.

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Here are some of the different types of domain names that you should avoid at all costs.

Domain Names That Are Too Long

You want the domain name for your website to be something that’s short and to the point. This is what’s going to make it memorable and encourage people to visit it.

In an effort to make your domain name unique, you might be tempted to go with a name that’s on the longer side. But this could lead to people typing your domain name wrong when attempting to visit your site and cause you to miss out on traffic.

Domain Names That Are Difficult to Read

You want the domain name for your site to be short so that it’s memorable. But you also want it to be short so that it’s easy for people to read and, maybe more importantly, easy for them to say when they’re discussing it with others.

Additionally, you want to limit the length of the words that you use in your domain name and avoid using any words that might be hard for the average person to spell. “Accommodations” is a good example of a word that wouldn’t be a good fit for a domain name since many people are going to struggle to spell it when typing it into their web browser.

Domain Names That Contain Numbers

There are some people who try to include numbers in domain names. This is almost always a bad idea since it often leads to confusion when people go to visit websites.

Let’s say that you want to sell the fact that you own the best car wash in your city. You might want to make your domain name something like “number1carwash.com.”

To you, this might seem like a perfect domain name. But what’s going to happen when half your customers try to visit your website by typing in “numberonecarwash.com”?

Unless you buy that domain name, too, and have it redirect people to “number1carwash.com,” you’re going to miss out on a lot of potential traffic. It’s best to leave numbers out of the equation altogether.

Domain Names That Have Hyphens in Them

In theory, adding hyphens to a domain name might seem like it would open up so many possibilities to you. Suddenly, you’ll be able to get access to a domain name that you wouldn’t be able to get without hyphens in it.

But here’s the thing: You’re going to have to work really hard to get people to remember to put hyphens into your domain name when trying to visit your site. Many of them will end up typing your domain name in without the hyphens and visiting a site other than yours.

You’re better off coming up with a different domain name than trying to squeeze hyphens into bad domain names.

Domain Names That Are Too Close to Existing Domain Names

Before you buy a domain name, make sure there isn’t already a domain name that looks almost identical to it. You shouldn’t just take an existing domain name and slap an “s” onto the end of it to lay claim to it.

You’re likely going to upset the owner of the existing domain name. You’re also going to confuse people who try to visit your website and leave the “s” off your domain name since they’ll end up on another site.

Domain Names That Are Different From Your Business Name

When you start a business website from scratch, SEO is very important. SEO, or search engine optimization, can give your site a big boost and help it land higher on search engine results pages, better known as SERPs.

There are a variety of ways to improve the SEO of your site. You can fill it with high-quality content that contains certain keywords that are important within your industry. You can also get other sites to link to your site in their content.

But one of the simplest ways to improve SEO is by making your business name and domain name the same. Google has been known to give businesses that take this approach to creating domain names a slight bump in the SEO department.

You’ll get your site off to a strong start as far as SEO is concerned by matching your domain name and business name.

Bad Domain Names Can Doom a Website Right From the Start

Of the 1.7 billion websites on the internet today, only about 200 million of them are active.

Some of the sites that are inactive have been abandoned because they weren’t generating enough interest. Others have been abandoned because those in charge of running them got tired of doing it.

But there are also lots of sites that have failed simply because they had bad domain names. With better domain names, they could have been so much more successful and possibly even still been around today.

Don’t make the same mistake that those with bad domain names have made. Make sure that you avoid the types of domain names that we mentioned above. The future success of your website could very well depend on it.

Looking to learn more about coming up with a great domain name? Read through some of the articles on our blog to find out how it’s done.