10 Best Practices: Choosing a Good Church Domain (URL)

Short of naming your church, finding the right web address is your most difficult task. Why? Because most people will end up discovering you or ministry information on your website. 

Yes, your website content needs to be very good in order for Google to direct searches to you. We deal with issues like that in our assessments. But the web process starts with getting the PERFECT URL!

With 105+ million US registered domains, there’re limitations in finding a unique domain. It’s getting harder and harder to find the best church domain! If you find one that meets these criteria (or most) and it’s available? Buy it (which is actually “renting” since you pay annually for continued use). Remember, you’re stuck with what you choose for a long time! So pick carefully. It’ll cost a ton to change it later. 

1. Use a Domain name helper. There are sites like leandomainsearch.com that’ll help find available URL options that works for your church and your keywords. 
2. Make it obvious. This address becomes a huge part of your brand! When someone hears the URL, it should be obvious it belongs to a church (you don’t have to have “church” in it though).
3. Include an SEO Keyword. This is a benefit when it comes to Google. If someone searches for a keyword or key phrase, google gives better ranking when you have a domain name that contains it. There are keyword discovery tools available like www.keywordtool.io and Google Keyword Planner.
4. Keep it short. Most common domain names are 12 characters long. At BeKnownForSomething.com (19 characters) we understand why long URLs are difficult! But it says our name and benefit!
5. Make it easy to say (so others get it right). When you say the URL, you don’t want to continuously spell something to clarify your church domain name. 
6. Use .com if possible. 35% of all domain registrations use .com (domainnamestat.com) – the most used! If that’s not available, try .org. If those aren’t available you may want to think of another name. One exception? .church is becoming a good option for churches. But it isn’t that well-known.
7. Avoid hyphens and numbers. Sure, we own church-branding.com but it’s difficult to say this URL without slowly explaining the hyphen. Beware of unusual characters in your main URL.
8. Buy options and have them redirect. Ok, I’m sure you’re asking why Be Known for Something owns other domains. Sometimes it makes sense. Buying a common misspelling of your name is wise. Other keywords in a domain (like we own DiscoverYourThread.com) is wise to have for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Just redirect them to your main website domain.
9. Threads make great domains. Yes, your thread IS your brand promise or story. So why not own the URL? That’s another reason we own DiscoverYourThread.com. Redirect the URL back to your main URL.
10. Is it available on social media? For simplicity, you need to extend your domain to other channels. Let that play a part in finding the perfect church domain.