Choosing a web address for your trade business

Use .co.uk or .uk if you work in the UK

British customers read .co.uk as a British business, which is exactly the signal a local trade wants. A .com is fine too, and worth taking as well if your name is available, but there is no advantage in .com for a business working within thirty miles of home.

Your business name usually beats keywords

'plumber-in-leeds-cheap.co.uk' looks like a marketing experiment and does not help you rank the way it did fifteen years ago. Your business name is easier to say on the phone, survives you expanding into other towns, and is the thing people will search for once they have met you.

Keep it sayable

You will read this out loud constantly. Avoid hyphens if you can, avoid numbers, avoid words with two plausible spellings, and keep it short enough to fit legibly on the side of a van.

Register it in your business's name

Make sure your business is the legal registrant, not your web designer or your nephew. This is the single most common expensive mistake in trade websites — people who cannot move their own address because somebody else owns it.

When you buy through Orvia the domain is registered to your business and you keep it if you leave.

Set the renewal to auto and keep the email current

Domains lapse when a reminder goes to an old email address. A lapsed domain takes your site and your email down at once and can occasionally be bought by someone else. Keep the contact details up to date and let it renew automatically.