Not buying the exact-match .com domain.
Agency purchased an abbreviated domain name but left the exact-match .com available for others. The abbreviated domain was fewer characters than the exact-match (which can be great), but in this case wasn’t fit for use where it would be most used, by newscasters and podcasters, and was less well suited than the exact-match domain—which was available at no markup.
Going public before buying a domain.
If a moderately serious business idea you’re about to share publicly holds more than $20 in potential commercial value, buy the .com domain if it is available. Going public includes everything from tweeting, to filing articles of incorporation, and we’ve surprisingly seen both.
Not buying the singularized and pluralized versions of a .com domain.
Related to the exact-match is the mistake of not minding the “s.” If your company is “Todds Repairs,” you should own ToddsRepairs.com and ToddsRepair.com. You won’t need two websites, but will instead choose one as the primary domain and redirect the other site to it.
Similarly, if your firm uses Roman numerals in its name, buy the numeric-valued name as well.
Not mulling over your company name and domain name in tandem—for hours or days if needed.
Your domain name and your company name go hand in hand. Perhaps “Todd Repairs” (the active rather than passive) is worth considering as your company name. Either way, owning both is a best-bet if possible.
This mistake sounds innocent (and not all that important), but the longer and deeper you dive into both your company name and domain name together, the more likely you are to find a vastly better domain.
Client had a long-winded domain name with some key terms spelled out in full while others were abbreviated. We thought this over a million ways to Sunday and ended up with a truly perfect four-letter domain name.
Buying an alternate TLD because the .com is too costly.
Yes, there are limits to what makes sense in domain expenses. But the error to be aware of is not securing the .com domain at a reasonable but high price, and then building an entire company IRL on an alternate TLD. The longer you do so, the more valuable the .com becomes. If your ideal .com is worth under $20,000 right now, it’s well worth considering, and you can buy some great domain names on a monthly payment plan.
Buying useless TLDs to “build a moat” around your business.
The .com TLD is preferred 9 out of 10 times. If you’ve landed on something you feel is incredibly valuable and you’re committed to it long-term, you may want to “build a moat” around it to some extent. You can very safely do so without buying every TLD. You typically do not need the .shop, .blog, .tech, .pro, .biz, .online, .us, and most other TLDs. (Not only do you not need them, many of them are widely considered inferior or unprofessional.) A good moat can mean buying as little as the .com and .net domains (and key pluralizations / alternate spellings, as mentioned above.)
The two questions you need to mull over here are:
- Where will a client or customer who does not know us at all assume we live online?
- What versions or iterations of our primary domain name would be valuable to competitors? Or would prevent us from “cornering” the digital landscape?
Please do not assume that cease and desist letters or later legal action will help you here, buying a $12 domain name to “own the whole lot” is by far the best scenario. We’ve seen SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) once dominated by single entities (products or companies) become cluttered with vaguely related competitors locally and across the country due to domain name matches. There are dozens of ways to get around the trademark and other laws you believe will protect you. [Pages 8-10, “Protecting Your Trademark,” USPTO.]
Buying innumerable domain names to “cover all bases.”
You’ll do best to thoroughly work over both your business name and your domain name in tandem. But just as you can make the mistake of not buying pluralizations or iterations of a domain name, you can also easily pendulum swing far beyond value—letting domain name availability alone be the sole factor in deciding what to name your product or company. Settling a product name or business name, then buying relevant domain names is usually the best sequence.
Not checking username availability on key social platforms.
It’s getting harder and harder to find a perfect .com domain name for which all social media handles are available. Which is alright. The mistake here is simply not checking if suitable and mostly uniform usernames are available across at least YouTube and the social platforms that are most important to your business—usually Instagram and/or TikTok, and LinkedIn.
Not searching (Google, Bing, ChatGPT) to see what the domain name returns in search right now.
Search Google, Bing, and ChatGPT to see what entity or idea these search engines and LLMs turn up right now. That helps isolate possible trademark problems, as well as get an idea of what it might be like to start ranking for your own brand name or company name over time.