Knowing how to choose the right domain name for your company is important. The wrong domain name can cost thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of euros over the years.

Domain names themselves are very affordable, with prices ranging from €5–€120/year. How can the wrong domain name cost so much? Below are three imaginary examples where the wrong domain name can cause significant losses to a company.

A company in Kankaanpää starts to organize trips to the countryside. The company decides on the kankaanpaanmaaseutumatkatkat.fi domain name. The trips are advertised at trade fairs and events by distributing business cards and flyers. However, the website is quiet. The domain name is too long and cumbersome to remember and type. To make it easier to remember, reserve the name in a shorter format, for example maalaismatkat.fi or in English ilovekankaanpaa.fi.

The domain name affects how easy or difficult it is to access your website. The easier the name is to remember and type, the more likely users are to find your page.

If accessing a website is too difficult, then people are not going to visit it. Customers are more likely to end up buying products and services through companies on Google’s first page, giving a competitor your potential customers.

Gooosh Oy produces knitted gloves. The company registers the gooosh.fi domain name. The letter “g” comes from the word “gloves” and the three o’s represent a knitting chain. It’s an amusing name, but how do you find websites with this domain?

First of all, three of the same vowels consecutively in a name isn’t typical in any language, as most have one or two of the same vowels consecutively. Second, the name is hard to remember, which is why a person who has received a recommendation from a friend while out for a walk won’t find the company’s pages later when googling. Third, the name does not support the company’s search engine visibility.

The company could reserve knittedgloves.com as its primary domain. This way, the company’s most important sales article, knitted gloves, works in its favor in the search engine.  In addition, the company could register knittedgloves.fi and gooosh.fi, and direct their traffic to its website (domain redirection).

If the keyword a user is looking for is in the domain name, you gain a competitive edge in visibility. The impact is small, but in tough competition, even a small advantage can help you gain precedence over the competitors.

The company in the previous example (Gooosh) is expanding its operations and starts to sell gloves in Germany, as well. To do this, the company registers the domain name knittedgloves.eu. The domain is the language version of the German website.

A German competitor notices the newcomer and registers the knittedgloves.de domain for itself and sells the same type of product as the new Finnish competitor.

Which domain name is easier to remember and engenders trust in a German customer? In this case, surely a competitor with a .de domain will rake in the dough.

Register your domain in the codes for the countries you export to. If you don’t want to create separate websites for each domain, you can use a domain parking service or redirect the domains to your main page.

Google’s algorithms are confidential to prevent fraudulent influence on its search results. However, Google has released a list of two hundred examples that affect search engine visibility.

As you know, nothing is as safe a hiding place as Google’s second page. This is why the appropriate keywords are paramount, i.e. to get your website on Google’s first page.

Below are a few examples from Google’s list that mention the impact of the URL on search engine visibility.

54. URL length

URLs that are too long can hamper your website’s search engine visibility.

Many studies in the industry have found that short URLs tend to have a small advantage in Google search results.

55. URL path

A page that is closer to the homepage can gain slightly more authority over pages buried deep in the architecture of the website.

This means that the internal link structure of your website also affects the search results. The link structure on your website should be simple; for example knittedgloves.fi/lined-gloves is better than knittedgloves.fi/shop/product/lined-gloves.

59. URL string

One relevance signal. A Google spokesman has expressed this as a “very small investment factor”.

These and other factors pertaining to Google’s search engine visibility can be found in Backlinko’s blog:   Google’s 200 Ranking Factors:  The Complete List (2021)