Create, Automate & Scale

10 ish tips to help you pick your Domain name

• Sophie Riley • Season 1 • Episode 29

Share episode

Send us a text

Ever wonder why some online brands just stick in your head? It could be their slick domain name. Join me, Sophie Riley, as I lay out the blueprint for securing the ideal domain name that's not only memorable but positions you as an expert in your field. As the digital landscape evolves, with giants like Google and Yahoo reshaping the rules of email marketing, I share must-know strategies for leveraging your own domain to take command of your content and links. Get the scoop on why moving to a professional email setup is crucial and how keeping meticulous records of your marketing efforts can save you a headache during inevitable transitions.

Navigating the world of entrepreneurial growth can feel like a labyrinth, but fear not; I've got the map. In a candid discussion about the shift from trading time for money to building a business that scales, I offer up actionable insights that could be your ticket to the six-figure club. We're all about sparking those aha moments, from understanding the power of a strong network to having frank conversations about money. Subscribe for a journey filled with practical tips and strategies, and don't hesitate to reach out as we collectively forge our paths to success on the Create, Automate, and Scale Podcast.

Sign up here to access a funnel page where I will be adding daily content on email marketing and deliverability: https://www.sophieriley.ca/emailmarketing

Goodies for you

Grab your FREE Ticket to The It's An Entrepreneur Era Bundle

Join the VIP Hub Crew with a 2 month FREE Trial and Broadcast Your Message to the World! Get in on the LEGACY Member Unlimited Plan (Normally $197) - $111/mo

** Available Until We Reach 1000 Members**

Are you ready to streamline your business and unlock powerful automations that save you hundreds of hours every month?

We're looking for 20 coaches, course creators, and service providers to join our exclusive BETA offer this October and get VIP access to our All-in-One Marketing Legacy Account and I’d love for you to be one of them!

Here’s what you’ll get as a BETA tester:

🪴 All-in-One Marketing Legacy Account: Everything you need to run and scale your business in one place.
🪴 45-Minute Onboarding Session: A personalized deep-dive to get you set up for success right away.
🪴 6 Private 1:1 Calls (30 minutes each): Dedicated support during your first 30 days to fast-track your progress.
🪴 Weekly 3-Hour Accountability Calls: Keep your momentum going with focused, action-packed sessions every week.
🪴 30 Days of Voxer Group Chat Access: Stay connected and get real-time feedback and support from the community and me.

Jump in now.

...

Sophie Riley:

Hi and welcome to Create Automate and Scale Podcast.

Sophie Riley:

Tune in to this inspirational, straight to the point, relatable content for entrepreneurs to help you mastermind the everyday hassle, give you business tips, networking opportunities, shameless money talks and scaling secrets. I'd like to support you, to support coaches and course creators just like you, to help you take action, stop trading dollars for hours and explode your business. It's time to hit that fixed figure and beyond. Let's go. Welcome entrepreneurs to the Create Automate and Scale Podcast. I'm your host, sophie Riley, and I'm thrilled to guide you through today's discussion, where we dive deep down into the world of domain names. Now, if you're a coach, a course creator, a service provider and you're looking to skyrocket your business, then you're absolutely in the right place. I also want to say that this podcast is part of a series where I teach you everything that I know about email marketing and email delivery, so that you can crush the changes that are coming effective February First, if you haven't heard lots of changes happening, you don't know about them. Make sure you tune in to this podcast to learn all about it. Be sure to check the show notes. I do have a special place for you to opt in and access all the podcast episodes, how-to videos, resources and more about the Google and Yahoo requirements. I even have a place for you to ask questions and get your answers while you are starting to implement these changes. All right, so let's get straight to the point.

Sophie Riley:

Choosing the perfect domain is a crucial step in establishing your online presence, and today I want to give you 10-ish things to consider, just things to think about, when you're choosing your domain name. So this is for you, all my beautiful people who are still sending from their Gmail their Yahoo account. This is no longer something that you are allowed to do as a bulk sender in the marketing world. You will be blocked by Yahoo, by Google, so you don't want to do that. So this is your time. This is your time to start shopping for a domain and create your email that will go with your domain. For example, one of my domain is Sophie Rileyca. If you don't know this, right now it's simply my name and I choose what if at Sophie Rileyca? And you could also go with something more traditional, such as hello at Sophie Rileyca or support at Sophie Rileyca, and if your domain name was not your first and last name, you could even say something like Sophie at Sophie Rileyca. In my case it kind of sounds a little let's go with repetitive Like this just really loves her name. There's tons of possibilities. All right. Now I want to touch on the benefit, because right now you might be like, oh, something else, I have to spend money on this, are you serious? But there is so many benefit to having your own domain. So this is like a small tangent, is something I'm really passionate about.

Sophie Riley:

Okay, often we hop onto all of these platforms and I'm going to use Calendly for one example but you hop on all of these platforms. So, let's say, you go and you hop on Calendly and you start sharing your calendar links. You share a link for people to book appointments on your calendar, whether there's sales calls, coffee calls, whatever calls that you have going on in your business. Now you've been an entrepreneur for, let's say, a year or two and you've dropped that link on hundreds of podcast interviews and more and you want to change to a platform that's more all inclusive, like the VIP hub. This is something that we go through almost daily. People are switching over to the VIP hub, but they don't want to lose their original link. However, they were sharing a link that is owned by a platform like Calendly. So Calendlycom slash, sophie Riley slash, I don't know, have coffee with me. So this link is everywhere.

Sophie Riley:

By having your own domain and really utilizing your domain and the links that you create, you're able to never be stuck or feel stuck in a platform. So what I mean by that is that you get to create funnels instead and link your domain to that funnel, so you're sharing links that you own. So, let's say, you create everything into the VIP Hub, but instead of sharing the VIP Hub links, you're going to create everything with your own domain. An example sophiereillyca slash calendar. Sophiereillyca slash. Have copy with me. If I was to create that in a funnel and I was to say, screw this, I don't like this platform, want to change or my business evolve. I need more. I need more than what this platform has to offer. Or hey, this platform is cheaper because the VIP Hub has some pretty epic prices, side note, anyways. So by sharing those links because you're sharing links that you own with your domain you will be able to recreate those wherever you go. This is the same for all of you people that are creating your email and your email marketing software, whether you're using the VIP Hub, melch and ConvertKit active campaign. I don't care. Stop writing emails directly into the platform. Keep a document, stay organized Google Drive, google Doc. Write your emails so that if you create emails for a year, two year, five year and you want to change platform because that platform no longer suits your need, you don't want to feel like again you're stuck paying overpriced monthly amounts because your list is growing and you don't want to be stuck there because all your stats, all your emails, are there. If you stay organized behind the scene and keep everything in separate folders and documents, you're never stuck in a platform. This was my little sidebar for the day.

Sophie Riley:

Okay, so choosing the right domain name is crucial. There's a lot of things that we can think about when we want to do that. A good domain name can make your site trustworthy, credible, drive more traffic. It's generally like your first impression. It's the first thing that people are going to notice when they go on your website. So let's talk about some things that you get to think about. First, there's the top level domain. If you may have seen this, maybe in a blog post or online, it's a TLD. What this means it's the part of the domain that looks like acomorgnet. Those are some of the most popular ones, so let's break them down.

Sophie Riley:

Com refers as a commercial. It is most commonly associated with businesses like Amazoncom, gmailcom. There's lots ofcoms out there. We've seen times org. Org stands for an organization and it's typically a use for non-profit. Then there isnet. Now this was initially used to indicate networking technologies, but it's also associated with business type as well. So those would be your three most popular.

Sophie Riley:

Now you can also use other types of website extensions, such asioshopstore. This is for you if you do have a store, if you do have a shop. These could also be great. And the last ones would be the ones that are country related. So, typically, if you have a local business, you may want to use the website extension for your country. You'll see that a lot of my domains are sophierallyca. I love that. People just get to know that I'm Canadian.

Sophie Riley:

Okay, something else to think about is to keep it simple and Short. Listen, word to mouth is a great way to share website. You'll find, especially as an entrepreneur, find yourself on podcast interviews, summit interviews and just places where you get to network and you get the opportunity. You get that person that's gonna say hey, sylvie, where can people find you in the online space? Well, this is not the place and time where you wanna drop this 27-letter website, because it's gonna be hard to understand, hard to remember and hard to spell. Some common example of very simple names that you may or may not have never heard could include, like Meida, zara, nike. Those are companies that use very short domain with four letter words, so so easy to remember. Remember that a domain name should stay under the 15 character if you want to make sure that it's not too long to remember, less chances of typo, misspelling, auto-correct all of these things happening, which would lead in traffic lost.

Sophie Riley:

I feel like I should also mention that you should avoid double letters, numbers and characters as well. Sometimes you know the domain that we wanna use is already taken and we just, hey, let me be creative and add a whole bunch of hearts to this. It's typically not going to work when you're trying to share this through word of mouth, especially like for me as someone who is French. I still don't know what any of the symbols are actually called. If I was to like, try to spell something with a character, it'd be like, let's say, word of mouth. I'd be like word tiny line of tiny line mouth, and then I sometimes don't know what things are called and I see the French word with an English accent and hope that it passes and listen. I hope that you understand sort of what I'm trying to share with you. Is that simple is always better.

Sophie Riley:

Something that you may wanna consider are trademarks. I wanna share a few places where you can check for trademark. Typically registering a domain with a trademark like you wouldn't be able to do that, but just in case, I'm gonna share a website, the Trade Electronic Search System, as well as two other name checker, but they're spelled weird. I'm going to put that in the description of this podcast and again, all of the websites, the research that I've done. Anything that I'm mentioning is in a funnel page. I'm putting everything together where it's an easy space to find everything. So make sure you opt in and get that totally free. So something that we could use to help us. You know sort of brainstorm. That domain is keywords, so a keyword that's related to your niche, so something that's passed the mind would be travel. You know, if you're a travel agent, travel in your domain may just be a brilliant idea. I'm gonna share a Google keyword planner as well, in case you wanna dabble in there, go, have some fun and do some research and see what would relate to your business, estimate the search volume and give you some performance insights on those specific keywords.

Sophie Riley:

All right, something else that you may wanna think about is consistency. So what I mean by that is that we are several places in the online space. Right, we have a website, some funnels, and maybe you're on social media YouTube, pinterest, tiktok, instagram, linkedin, f, facebook. I'm sure I'm forgetting some, but you get the point. But using consistent branding with our domain is key to sort of make our business all feel attached, unified. So you could find me on Google, sophiereillyca, and then you'll see also my Instagram, my TikTok, my Facebook all using that name. So it's really, really easy to find me and my business.

Sophie Riley:

Okay, if you are like me, you know when you go on ADHD rabbit hole and you do a whole lot more than you should. This is the place of the podcast where we've gone over. I don't know what we should do, but I have some extra tips for you. So think about checking the domain history, okay. So this is yeah, this is Sophie's little fear Like what if somebody was using this website, this domain, and they were into some shady stuff, right? So the first thing that checking the domain history could give you is competitive research. So the history may include information on whether the domain was used for a website that's related to your niche niche niche niche we may have to have this discussion too, so registering it may help your SEO strategy. Now the security the domain history helps identify past cyber attacks could be important. I'm kind of a nerd.

Sophie Riley:

Now, potential branding issue if the previous rent sites owners ran some shady stuff in their business, maybe you want to avoid this. Like, did the shady stuff give them the domain a bad reputation? That's important to know. There's a lot of new things that are coming up into the marketing world bot, long store shorts. Any domain that use a black hat SEO can get a Google penalty. So these are the things that you want to know. So I'm going to, of course, give you the resources that you need to check that.

Sophie Riley:

We recommend using online tools like Wayback Machine, who is request and domain tool to investigate the domain ownership history of these sites. I mean, it's exciting. I'm giving you a lot of information, but all of the website that you need to do a quick, quick search. So hopefully this is really really helpful for you. Now you could always, now you could also use a domain name generator.

Sophie Riley:

Listen, there is nothing like brainstorming a name for a domain, a course, an event I typically need like a little mimosa, otherwise I overthink everything. But this is so much fun. But I also understand that it can be overwhelming and not knowing which one to pick, and I know that it can be time consuming. So in many cases, the desired terms are already registered or trademark, so maybe you want to use a domain name generator. It's an excellent solution for finding great domain names, ideas and sort of alternative to what your original thoughts were, and of course, many are available, including host singer, domain checker, look-on domain type and name boy. I'm going to give you all the links below, so don't stress Now. I feel like this was a lot of information, but hopefully this is giving you some insights and, most importantly, you can see the possibilities.

Sophie Riley:

After saying all this, I also want to say that, if this is overwhelming, getting a domain with your internet first and last name is such an amazing place to start, especially like, let's say, like me, your Sophie Riley all over the internet, getting a Sophie Riley dot ca, especially if your coach is such an amazing, amazing place to start. Now it's time to go and purchase that domain. My personal favorite place to buy domain, where I bought all my domain and what is most familiar to me is name cheap. But there's definitely a lot of places where you can purchase domain. I suggest just doing a quick search and see what is better for you. So it's time to get your domain and join me in the next episode where we dive into your current email score and what you have to do to not only authenticate your email, the raw email delivery, no matter what your list is, whether it's small, it big, I got you covered.

Sophie Riley:

Thanks for tuning in to the Create, automate and Scale podcast. We hope you found today's episode to be inspirational, informative and straight to the point. Our goal is to provide you with a relatable content that helps you mastermind the everyday hassle, roll your business and achieve your goals. As an entrepreneur, we know how tough it is that it can be to navigate the world of business, which is why we're here to support you with valuable tips, networking opportunities, shameless money talk and scaling secrets. You're dedicated to helping coaches and course creators take action, stop trading dollars for hours and explode their business to hit that six-figure and beyond. Make sure you subscribe to our podcast to stay up to date with the latest episode, and feel free to leave a review or reach out to us with any feedback or questions that you may have. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode of Create, automate and Scale.