9 Tips for Choosing a Domain Name for Your Business

Your domain is your business's address online. It goes on business cards and van wraps, and it gets spelled out letter by letter over the phone. It outlives your logo colours by years. You can change it later, but redirects, email addresses, printed material and your history on Google can make that an expensive move.

A line we often hear in first meetings is: “The name I wanted is taken, what now?” The nine tips below help in that situation, and just as much if you haven't thought about a name at all yet.

1. It should survive a phone call

Try this simple test. Say the domain to a friend over the phone and have them type it. If they ask “how do you spell that?”, the candidate is weak. Words that can be written two ways (in Turkish, “ekspres” or “express”, “kafe” or “cafe”) can send some visitors to the wrong address.

2. Short, but not a password

Short names read easily and stick; around 15 characters is a good upper limit. Still, don't cut it down into a string of meaningless letters. If you're torn between short and meaningful, pick meaningful.

3. Match your sign

If the name over your door and your domain differ, people searching for you can land on someone else's site. Say your salon's sign reads “Örnek Kuaför”. When ornekkuafor.com matches both the sign and the Instagram handle, customers can find it just by guessing.

4. Avoid Turkish characters

Domains with ç, ğ, ı, ö, ş or ü can technically be registered. In practice they can cause trouble. Some email systems don't handle them well, a supplier abroad can't type them on their keyboard, and a shared link can turn into an odd string starting with “xn--”.

Choosing “ornekoptik.com” over “örnekoptik.com” saves you a lot of headaches. If you like, register the version with Turkish characters too and redirect it to the main address.

5. Treat hyphens as a last resort

“ornek-optik.com” is readable. But on the phone you have to say “ornek hyphen optik”, and some listeners will drop the hyphen. The address they remember may lead to another business or an empty parked page. Only use a hyphen if the unhyphenated version is truly gone and there's no other good option.

6. .com or .com.tr?

For a business that only serves Türkiye and local customers, .com.tr is a good signal: it tells visitors they're dealing with a business operating here. Under current rules, .com.tr is allocated without documents, first come, first served; check the latest registration rules on the official source that manages .tr domains. The name you want may be taken as .com but still free as .com.tr.

.com makes more sense if you plan to sell abroad or use your brand internationally. The habit of typing “.com” by reflex is also still strong, which is a small risk for anyone who picks .com.tr.

Our general advice: if both are free, take both, make one the main address and redirect the other to it. Decide which one is primary based on where your customers are. We covered the .com.tr registration steps in a separate post.

7. Buy enough extensions to protect the brand

There's no need to collect every extension. Every .net, .org and .info you add stretches the yearly renewal bill. The sensible move is to buy the versions people might confuse: .com and .com.tr, plus a common typo if there is one. All of them point to one main address with a permanent (301) redirect.

8. Three checks before you buy

• Is there a registered trademark with the same name? You can search the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office's trademark database. A domain containing someone else's registered trademark can be challenged later; if unsure, consult a trademark attorney or lawyer.
• Is the same username free on Instagram and the other platforms you use?
• Is the name's history clean? A previously used domain can carry a spam past. Looking at its old versions in a web archive such as the Wayback Machine takes five minutes.

9. Register it in your own name

We left this one for last because it's one of the biggest sources of trouble. If an agency, a designer or a relative bought the domain on their own account, on paper they own it. When the relationship sours or that person becomes unreachable, getting your address back can take weeks.

Keep the domain in your own account and give the agency access when needed. We look at who should own a website in more detail in another post.

A quick note on price: the yearly fee for .com and .com.tr varies by registrar and exchange rate. Some registrars discount the first year and charge full price on renewal. When comparing, look at the renewal fee, not the first-year price.