Your domain name is the one piece of your business that you say out loud, type on a phone keyboard, and print on a business card. It will outlive the design of your website, the wording of your tagline, and almost certainly the version of your logo you chose this week. Spend an hour on it. The decision compounds.
Start with the constraints, not the inspiration
Before you brainstorm anything, write down three constraints. First, length: aim for 6 to 14 characters. Domains shorter than 6 characters in the popular TLDs were registered years ago; domains longer than 14 are typo magnets. Second, pronounceability: read the name out loud to someone in another room and ask them to spell it back. If they cannot, the name is broken. Third, search collision: type the name into Google and the App Store. If the first page is dominated by an unrelated brand, your SEO is already on the back foot.
Brandable beats descriptive in 2026
Two decades ago, exact-match domains like bestdentistlondon.com ranked because Google trusted the keyword in the URL. That signal is dead. What ranks now is authority, and authority comes from a memorable brand. Stripe, Notion, Figma, and Vercel are all invented words. None of them describe what the company does. All of them are unforgettable. Pick a name that can grow with you — a name that still works when you add a second product line or pivot to a new market.
Pick a TLD that signals what you are
The .com TLD is still the default for business in the United States and for any company that wants to be taken seriously globally. If your .com is taken, .co and .io are credible second choices for tech and consumer products, .ai is the obvious pick for anything machine-learning adjacent, and a country-code TLD (.uk, .de, .ca, .com.au) is great if you serve one market and want local SEO weight. Avoid the cheap promotional TLDs (.xyz, .top, .click) for primary brands — they read as low-trust to most buyers.
Check trademarks before you fall in love
Once you have a shortlist, search the United States Patent and Trademark Office database and the EU equivalent (EUIPO) for the exact word and obvious variants. If a registered mark in your industry already covers the name, walk away — a cease-and-desist after you have built brand equity is the most expensive mistake on this entire list. Domain checks alone are not enough; trademark covers the use of the name in commerce, not just the URL.
Avoid hyphens, numbers, and creative spellings
Hyphens get lost when the name is spoken. Numbers introduce ambiguity (is it the digit 4 or the word "for"?). Creative spellings (Flickr, Tumblr) worked in the 2010s and now look dated; modern brands either own a real word or invent a clean new one. If your first-choice .com is taken, do not buy the hyphenated or numbered version — pick a different name.
Check social handles in parallel
Search the exact name on Instagram, X, TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube. You do not need a perfect match on every platform, but if every handle is taken by an active account in a different industry, you will spend the next five years explaining who you are. Lock the matching handles the same day you register the domain — they are free and irrevocable peace of mind.
Buy the domain, then sit on the decision for 24 hours
OneClick will let you register your chosen domain in about 30 seconds, and DNS will be live within half an hour. But before you announce the brand to investors, customers, or anyone you cannot easily un-tell, sleep on it. The names that survive a single night of distance are the ones that survive a decade.