How to choose a domain name for your business.

The short answer: the phone test

A good business domain is short, clearly yours and easy to spell after hearing it once. That last test matters most, because people hear your domain more often than they read it: on the phone, from a customer telling a friend, from the side of a van in traffic. Say the domain to someone who has never seen it written and ask them to type it. If they ask how it is spelled, or whether there is a dash in it, try another.

Take a two-van plumbing firm called Priestley & Sons. The full name, priestleyandsonsplumbing.com, is long, and the "and" is the first thing people get wrong. priestleyplumbing.com passes the phone test far better. Priestley also gets typed as Priestly, so the firm buys both spellings and points the second at the first.

The order to work in: pick the name, pick the ending, check that nobody else has a claim to it, then register it in the business's name with the renewal price in front of you. Each step is below.

Start from the name customers already use

Use the name on your sign and your invoices, then cut it down. Drop Ltd, LLC, Inc and "and Sons" unless customers say them when they talk about you. If the short form is taken, add the word a customer would add: the trade, as in harperdental, or the town, as in harperdentalyork.

Then check how it looks written down:

• No hyphens. Said aloud, a hyphen has to be spelled out, and people forget it.
• No numbers unless they are part of your name. Four or 4 is a question every time someone hears it.
• Read it in lower case with no spaces, the way it will appear. Some names run together into words you did not mean.
• Avoid letters that blur on a small screen, such as rn next to m, or l next to 1.
• Avoid a double letter where two words meet, as in kellysspa. People type one s.
• Keep the town out unless you will always work there. A bakery that opens a second shop has an address with the wrong town in it.

Do not stuff it with search words. Google's own SEO starter guide says keywords in a domain name have hardly any effect on ranking. A string such as bestcheapplumberleeds is hard to say, looks like spam on a van and does nothing for your place in search. Put the search words on your pages instead, where Google reads them.

Pick the ending: .com or your country's

The ending, such as .com, .ie or .co.uk, matters less to Google than people think and more to customers. Google says the ending only matters when you target users in one country, and even then it is a low-impact signal. For customers it says something: a .ie or .de address tells people in Ireland or Germany that you are local, and .com is what people type when they guess.

A simple rule:

• Customers mostly in one country: make that country's ending the main address, and buy the .com too if it is free.
• Customers in several countries, or online only: use .com.
• In the US, use .com. It is the ending people try first when they guess an address.

Some country endings have rules about who may hold them. A .ie needs a provable connection to Ireland, such as a company registered there or sales to customers on the island. A .eu is for citizens of the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein or Norway, for people living there and for organisations established there. A .us is for US citizens and residents, US organisations and foreign businesses with a real presence in the US. A .de is open to holders outside Germany, with an extra duty for them if a dispute arises. Read the registry's rules before you buy, because some registries check eligibility after the name is yours.

Newer endings such as .plumbing or .dental work like any other. Google treats them the same as .com. Customers are the problem: they add .com out of habit, and email addresses on unfamiliar endings get mistyped. Use one as an extra address if you like it, not as your only one.

Check the name before you buy it

Ten minutes of checks now can save a rebrand later:

• Search the name on Google and Google Maps. A business in your trade with the same name nearby will get some of your calls and reviews, and you will get theirs.
• Search the trademark registers. In the US, use the USPTO's trademark search. In Europe, TMview searches the EU trademark office and many national offices at once. A registered mark in your trade is a reason to choose again.
• Look the domain up on ICANN Lookup, or on your country registry's lookup, to see whether it is registered and when it expires.
• Check that the social media names you want are free, so one name works everywhere.
• Say it on the phone to two people who have never seen it.

A company name on the company register does not give you the domain, and owning a domain gives you no trademark. If a trademark question is not clear-cut, ask a trademark adviser before you print anything.

When the name you want is taken

Look it up before you give up on it. A name that is registered but shows nothing may be parked by an investor, held by a business that never built a site, or close to expiring. What to try, in this order:

• Add a word: the trade or the town, as in priestleyplumbing or harperdentalyork.
• Use your country's ending if the .com is taken, or the other way round.
• If the name is listed for sale, decide what it is worth to you before you ask the price. Pay through an escrow service or the registrar's own marketplace, so the money and the domain change hands together.
• If someone registered your trademark to sell it back to you or to pass themselves off as you, trademark owners have a dispute process, the UDRP, for .com and other generic endings. Ask an adviser before you start.

Avoid a name one letter or one ending away from a competitor's. Their customers will reach you by mistake and complain, and some of yours will reach them.

Buy a few extra domains, not a dozen

Extra domains catch the mistakes customers make and stop anyone else using a near copy of your name. Two or three are usually enough:

• The other main ending: the .com if your main address is a country ending, or your country's ending if it is a .com.
• The obvious misspelling, if your name has one.
• The full name, if you shortened it and people might type the long form.

Point each extra at your main site with a permanent redirect, which tells Google that the main address is the one to show. Do not build a second site on it. Every extra domain is one more renewal to pay and one more date to miss, so buy the ones that catch real mistakes and stop there.

Choose where to register it

A registrar is the company you buy the domain through and renew it with. For .com and the other generic endings, use one accredited by ICANN. For a country ending, the registry lists the registrars it works with.

The first-year price matters less than these:

• The renewal price, shown before you pay.
• Two-step verification on the account.
• Auto-renew, with reminders by email.
• A transfer lock you can switch on and off yourself.
• DNS settings included, so you can point the domain at your website and email.
• A way to give a supplier access without sharing the login.
• Nothing that makes it hard to move the domain out later.

Buying the domain from your website builder or email provider is convenient, and fine as long as you know where it ended up. Google Workspace, for example, sells domains at sign-up through its partner Squarespace, so the domain sits in a Squarespace account. Write down which company holds it and which login opens it.

Read the renewal price, not the first-year price

Registrars often sell the first year at a discount and make it back at renewal. For .com and other generic endings, ICANN's rules make registrars show the renewal price, the price of renewing late and the restore fee when you register, so read all three before you pay.

Some names are sold as premium, at a higher price set by the registry or by the person selling them. Ask whether the renewal is at the premium price or the normal one before you agree.

You can register a generic domain for up to ten years at a time. A longer term costs more up front and removes several chances to forget. For what the rest of a website costs, see what decides the price of a website.

Register it in the business's name

The registrant, the name on the registration, is the owner as far as the registrar is concerned. Make it the business, with details the business controls:

• Registrant: the business's legal name, not a designer's, an employee's or a relative's.
• Contact email: an address someone reads that does not depend on this domain working, such as the owner's existing address. If the domain lapses, the reminders sent to an address on the same domain go nowhere.
• The account: in the business's name, with two-step verification on, the login in a password manager the business controls and a second person who can get in.
• Payment: a card the business holds, with auto-renew on.

If a designer registers it for you, ask for exactly this in writing before they start. Questions to ask a web designer covers the rest of what to agree. When we build a site, the domain, hosting and accounts are set up in your name or handed over at launch, as our websites page says.

Test it as an email address too

Your domain sits after the @ in every email address you give out, so try it there. sarah@priestleyplumbing.com is easy to say and type. sarah@priestleyandsonsplumbingservices.co.uk is not, and it will not fit on a business card.

Pick the addresses at the same time as the name: one for each person who emails customers, plus role addresses such as info@ or bookings@ that stay when staff change. A dental practice might give patients reception@ and keep named addresses for the dentists. How to set up a business email address covers the setup.

Four businesses, four choices

• A three-chair barbershop in Cork: the .ie as the main address, because every customer is local, with the .com pointed at it.
• A roofing firm working across two neighbouring towns in Ohio: the .com with the trade in it, such as hollandroofing.com, and no town in the name, because it plans to cover a third.
• A bookkeeper in Lisbon with clients across Europe: the .com as the main address, since clients abroad guess .com, and the .eu as an extra.
• An online shop selling dog treats in Germany: the .de as the main address for German customers, and the .com pointed at it until the shop sells further afield.

None of them bought more than two domains, and every one of them passes the phone test.

Changing it later costs more than choosing well now

A new domain later means new email addresses, new printing and new links everywhere, and the search history of the old address has to be carried across with redirects. Businesses do it after a rebrand or a merger. It works when it is planned like a website redesign, with every old address redirected to its new page.

If you ever move, keep the old domain registered for years afterwards, so its redirects and email forwarding keep working. Never let it lapse: someone else can register it and receive email sent to your old addresses, as what happens when your domain expires explains.

After you buy it

• Switch on auto-renew and the transfer lock.
• Turn on two-step verification and add a second person from the business.
• Put the renewal date in a shared calendar a month ahead, even with auto-renew on.
• Point the domain at your website and set up email, and keep a copy of every DNS record you add.
• Write down the registrar, the account, the renewal date and where the DNS lives, and keep it with your other business records.

A cleaning company that does this on day one never has to hunt for a login when the van needs repainting or a new supplier asks for access. If you later move the domain to another registrar, how to transfer a domain gives the order that keeps the website and email running.