Appy Pie : What characters are allowed in a domain name | Appy Pie Help

Appy Pie : What characters are allowed in a domain name?

By Abhinav Girdhar | Updated on March 3, 2022, 10:24 am

A domain name is a way people find your website, business or home. If you consider domain name as the address, the web hosting service is a building.

Almost every website that we come across throughout the day, has its unique domain name. For example, Amazon is the name of the company, while the domain name is amazon.com.

What is a Domain Name?

Domain name refers to the website name. Internet users can use your domain name instead of the web address to access your website. A domain name helps users find and identify computers on the online network. Users also use IP addresses to find the location of the computers and to identify them, but it is difficult for them to remember strings of numbers. Being this the reason, domain names were developed and are being used to identify objects on the Internet rather than using IP addresses.

The domain name could be any combination of letters and numbers, which can be used in various combinations and domain name extensions, like .net, .com and more.

You must register the domain name before using it. Every domain name is different and unique. No two online platforms can have the same domain name. If someone types in your domain name, it will go to your website only.

Valid Domain Name Characters

Domain names can be divided into two parts - Label and TLD. In the case of amazon.com, the label would be amazon, while the TLD is .com. Top-level domains or extensions are the strings of text that go after the label.

A domain name can be a combination of letters and numbers with up to 63 characters excluding the 4 characters that are used to identify the domain extension for example, .com, .net, .org and others.

The hyphen (-) is the only symbol that can be included in a valid domain name characters, although it cannot start or end with this symbol nor have consecutive hyphens. Other common symbols such as underscores (_), exclamation points (!) and asterisks (*) are not allowed.

Features of an Ideal Domain Name

Domain names are the cornerstone of your business website’s success. They are the real estate of the whole online network. Go through the below-mentioned characteristics and learn how to identify an ideal domain name.

Users visiting your website via organic links or the search engines will not notice the URL and they will pay attention to the name. And the next time they want to visit your site it is likely that they will type its name followed by a .com. If they don’t find you, they will just go somewhere else.

  • Short and easy to remember:
  • An ideal domain names are short and easy to remember. Many website users do not create bookmarks and just remember the names of their favorite websites. They type them whenever they want to visit them. If the names would be short and easy, it will not be difficult for the users to remember them.
  • Easy to Spell:
  • Use all the valid domain name characters and create a unique name for your website, which is easy to spell. So that users could type it without making mistakes.
  • Domain Name extension:
  • Many organizations prefer to register a .org domain, and companies located in some specific geographical regions register a local domain, for example, .it, .cn, .co.uk, etc. Other than these, a general .com domain is the best way to go. This is the basic extension and has been that popular that it is already stuck in visitors’ minds.
  • Descriptive:
  • Domain name should be descriptive to give the visitors an idea of what the site is all about. Users search for the links on search engines, but they click on the appealing links. For example, if someone is looking for a movie review, they will click on MoviesCentral.com instead of MikesLair.com.
  • Brandable:
  • An interesting combination of valid domain name characters makes it brandable. Having a nice pronunciation adds an appealing effect to the domain name.

Domain should be that good that it leaves a good first impression as this is the first thing that the visitors see before even accessing your website. Make an impressive and effective brand name that is easy to remember for the users. It is outstanding if it is one-word, Good when two-word, it is average when three-word and more than that is surely a bad idea.

Benefits of owning a Domain

Having your domain is not a requirement for every business but there are benefits of creating one for your own. Let us discuss some of them.

  • Establishes the business identity
  • Provides a convenient option for the users to find you easily
  • Offers better exposure on search engines
  • Better Branding
  • Safeguard your ideas, identity, and your business
  • Improved SEO Ranking

Go through the above-mentioned benefits of having your domain. A domain name can work as a keyword and help you improve the SEO ranking for your website if you include one in your domain name.

Conclusion

All the domains to have all the features mentioned above. If you can’t find one with all of them, don’t get discouraged! These are just aspects that you should keep in mind when creating your domain name. Just make sure your domain name has most of them!

Catchy, short, and easily spelled domain names can prove to be the best option! Make sure that users can remember your domain name easily!

Think of multiple keywords that suit your business! Do not forget to use valid domain name characters or the domain name checker will not accept the entry. Check out the domain name checker suggestions. You might get some great names you didn't think about!

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