Choose your website address

Part 1: choose your website address

Your website address is called a "domain". It looks like joesplumbing.com. You'll buy it tomorrow. Today you choose it.

A good domain is:

• short and easy to say out loud. Imagine telling it to someone over the phone.
• your business name, or your service plus your area. Examples: joesplumbing.com, leedsplumber.co.uk
• free of hyphens and odd spellings. They cause mistakes.
• on a familiar ending. Use .com, or your country's own (.co.uk, .in, .de, .fr, .com.au). Local customers trust their country's ending.

Write down your first choice and two backups, in case the first is taken.

Part 2: the one rule to follow forever

Google, Bing, Apple and AI assistants check whether your business details match everywhere they appear. When they don't match, they trust you less and show you less.

So today, write your name, address and phone number in one exact form and never change it:

• Name: Joe's Plumbing (not "Joes Plumbing" in one place and "Joe's Plumbing Ltd" in another)
• Address: 14 Station Road, Leeds LS6 2AB (decide "Road" or "Rd" once)
• Phone: +44 113 496 0000 (decide on one format)

If you travel to customers and don't want your home address public, that's fine. Write your service area instead, and we'll hide the address where needed.