Lawyer Domain Names: 6 Things To Consider Before Buying

It’s almost impossible to register the domain name you initially thought of or loved a lot. You’ll almost always see that your desired lawyer domain names were already registered by someone else but they’re not using them, just parked them and now asking tens of thousands of dollars to sell. 

Relatable right?

This is why most lawyers end up buying domain names that make them suffer a lot a few years later, when they’ve already gained some traction. Then they choose to change the domain name which causes tons of losses, especially lost organic traffic and brand awareness. Check out my guide on choosing your law firm name with tons of ideas.

So, how to choose your law firm’s domain name? 

The most important factors in choosing a domain name are:

1. Domain & URL length
2. Branded vs Keyword-rich Domain
3. Numbers and Hyphens in Domain Name
4. TLDs or Domain Extensions (.com, .us, .lawyer, etc.)

I’ll explain each of these factors from my own experience and will also share my hacks on:

• How To Name Your Law Firm
• How To Buy Your Lawyer Domain Name

This article will be your ultimate guide on choosing the right domain name for your business, be it a law firm or any other niche. All the guidance will be based on my years of experience as a Lawyer SEO Expert who manages a team of SEO, PPC, SMM, and Email Marketing experts. So, no matter your marketing goal, this will be your ultimate guide.

1. Domain and URL Length

Google and other search engines show at most 75 characters in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), including “https://” (security protocol), “www.” (subdomain), the domain name, the path to the page, and the page slug (the name of each page). If the total character exceeds 75, Google will truncate either the last part or anything in the middle of the URL. 

Here’s an example of a URL that has less than 75 characters and hence shows the entire URL in the SERP:

The following example shows a URL with more than 75 characters where the last part of it is truncated:

And lastly, the following example shows a URL with more than 75 characters where the middle of it is truncated:

Why Is It Necessary To Keep Your URL Short?

There are 2 main reasons. 

1. When the URL is short, online searchers can see the entire of it, and better understand the page intent, which increases the click-through rate.
2. Short but descriptive URL is a small ranking factor. If it includes your keyword, that’s a bigger ranking factor. Studies have backed this claim.

What Does It Have To Do With Your Domain Name?

As you can guess now, when your domain name itself is large, it’s tough to keep your service page or blog URLs under 75 characters, especially if you create subservices under service pages which is a common and good SEO practice. 

Similarly, if your entire URL is long, it will look weird if you do other types of marketing, say adding a landing page link in your reels comments. Many use URL shorteners to handle such cases, but due to the rise of phishing sites, your leads will be sceptical about clicking those short links. 

For example:

Say you’re 3 founders and want to use the traditional naming convention to include the founder names. So your domain name could be: 

• “williamjamesandhenry.com”, which is 24 characters long
• “wjhlaw.com”, i.e. the first letter of each founder, which is only 10 characters long

If we only take domain length as the naming factor, that’s a difference of 10 characters in every URL!

Now, let’s say you have a landing page for car accidents, which is a part of personal injury. Then how would your URL look like?

• “https://www.williamjamesandhenry.com/services/personal-injury-lawyers/car-accidents”: 83 characters, 8 characters above the recommended length
• “https://www.wjhlaw.com/services/personal-injury-lawyers/car-accidents”: 69 characters, within the recommended length

The second option is short, readable, descriptive, and includes the keyword.

WWW vs non-WWW: Which One Should You Choose?

“www.” indicates a subdomain of your website. It’s an old convention to include www in your URL. I personally don’t like it as it only increases the URL length by 4 characters. It has no added benefit, so why should I use it? 

I’d suggest you the same, don’t use it.

However, if your site already uses www in the URL and you have organic traffic, don’t remove it. Even with proper redirects, you’ll lose around 30% of traffic.

What is Domain, Subdomain, URL, TLD, and URL?

A domain is a human-readable address that identifies a website on the internet. Think of it as the main address of a house.

Example: google.com, wikipedia.org, example.net

A subdomain is a prefix added to the main domain name. It creates a separate section or area within the main website. Imagine it as an apartment number within a building.

Example: blog.example.com, mail.google.com, shop.amazon.com

A URL is the complete web address that specifies the location of a specific resource (like a web page, image, or document) on the internet. It's like the full street address, including the house number and apartment number.

Example: https://www.example.com/blog/article-title, https://images.google.com/logo.png

The TLD is the last part of a domain name, the part that comes after the final dot. It indicates the type of organization or the geographical location of a website. Think of it as the city or state in an address.

Examples:

• .com (commercial)
• .org (organization)
• .net (network)
• .edu (education)
• .gov (government)
• .uk (United Kingdom - country code)
• .us (USA - country code)

What If My Domain Name Is Already Long?

Based on different scenarios, you can make different decisions.

• Do you already have a website that’s driving you organic leads? If yes, don’t change it, otherwise:
  • Do you already have a brand value for that domain name? If yes, keep that while get a new domain and slowly transition to the new domain and redirect the old one to the new one. Otherwise:
    • Just change the domain
  • Did you choose this domain based on EMD or PMD hacks? If yes, keep it, get another domain, and see which one works better. Otherwise:
    • Just change the domain
• No website, no brand value, no EMD or PMD: do you have any good reason that is more important than the domain length? If yes, keep it. Otherwise,
  • Just change the domain

2. Branded vs Keyword-Rich Domains

I’ve already mentioned EMD and PMD above, but what are they and why should you care?

• Branded domain names: a new, unique, short, meaningful or meaningless brand name
• EMD: exact match domains
• PMD: Partial match domains

Here’s a visual difference:

When To Use Branded Domain Names?

The main benefit of branded domain names is that you can freely choose a short business name as you wish, and scale your business in the future. 

For example, you might start by only providing Chapter 7 bankruptcy services to individuals. Then, over time, you expand to Chapters 11 and 13 and expand to services to businesses, too. Maybe after a few years, you decide to expand your firm and hire professionals like tax and business lawyers. You can do that without changing the domain name.

However, there are some drawbacks to choosing branded domain names.

You have to run awareness campaigns to create brand value. People won’t know what to expect from you just by reading your domain name. 

Branded names won’t give you any initial added SEO benefit like EMD or PMD could.

Overall, if you have a good marketing budget and a good team like Lawyer SEO Expert, you don’t have to worry about that. 

When To Use EMD?

If you search for a business name, search engines will try to show you that business website on top of the SERP. 

SEOs have been using this loophole to create business names based on keywords with good search volume. 

Generally such keywords are tough to rank for, have a high search volume, and CPC is generally high cause the keywords tend to be service related.

However, Exact Match Domains don’t work that well like they used to do in the past. But they still work for local businesses. 

For example, service+location keywords (injury lawyers denver) work better than service keywords (injury lawyers).

The main issue with EMD is that if you want to expand your service list or geographic area, your audience might misunderstand you as you’ve already specified one primary service or area in the domain name. 

Based on your plan, you can still choose EMD if its value is really high and may reduce your organic marketing budget.

When To Use PMD?

Currently PMDs work better than EMDs for both local and national search terms. I predict they will continue to work in the future, mainly because they include a brand name. 

Basically PMD shows what a brand specializes in. 

Overall, it’s a balanced choice between branded domains and EMDs.

My personal suggestion would be to choose a PMD in the form of [one word brand name + one or two word main service name or location name].

3. Numbers and Hyphens in Domain Names

I do not recommend using numbers or hyphens in domain names for many reasons.

Why don’t I recommend using numbers?

First, many spammy websites do it. So unless the number is very meaningful, it will look spammy. 

Next, even if you use common numbers, such as 365, 247, etc., it can still be confusing to people who have heard about your business and try to find it on Google or social media. 

For example, I told my friend about you. You’re a good lawyer, and your law firm's name is Lawyers360, which means your firm covers every type of legal case.

Now, my friend can search many things on Google to find you and might end up hiring a different lawyer. Such as:

1. Lawyerthreesixty
2. Lawyerthreesixzero
3. Lawyer360
4. Lawyerthreesixo

You see the issue? 

Why don’t I recommend hyphens in domain names?

There is a debate about whether you should use hyphens in domain names or not. I don’t recommend it for 3 reasons:

1. Your Competitor Will Steal Your Branded Searches

When you use hyphens, it’s almost always because your target domain name is not available. Now, when people search for your domain, will they include the hyphen? 

Certainly not! 

And your competitor will appear in their search results instead of you! So you spend money on brand awareness but they enjoy the benefits!

2. Scammers Use It A Lot!

Let me give you an example.

My business domain is LawyerSEOExpert.com. Now a scammer can just create another website with the domain LawyerSEO-Expert.com. 

Now they create a social media account, copy my logo, brand color, fonts, everything, buy fake followers, make some posts with tons of fake comments and reactions, and then start advertising.

You see their ads with lucrative offers. You’re someone who reads my blogs regularly and is interested in my SEO and other marketing services.

You found their offer so lucrative that you just booked a package before the offer ended.

What just happened?

You got scammed, just by not noticing the small difference in the domain name!

And before I could find that business and report copyright infringement, they had already scammed many of my leads, including you.

3. It Looks So Cheap Branding

How many big brands did you ever see using hyphens in their domains?

Not many, right?

That’s why people generally don’t like it, it makes them feel the brand is so cheap.

And I never personally click on links that include hyphens.

4. TLDs or Domain Extensions (.com, .us, .lawyer, etc.)

TLD, or Top-Level Domain is the last part of a domain name, which is used to identify the general purpose of a domain. It could be the type of business (.com for commercial, .gov for government, .org for organization, etc.), or the location of the business (.us for USA, .co.uk for UK, .sydney for Sydney of Australia, etc.). 

Different TLDs cost very differently, based on what the registries are willing to sell them at. Yes, different TLDs are sold by different registries and they solely set the price. 

When choosing a domain extension, many business owners just go for the first year free or super cheap ones. I’d highly recommend not to do that. 

Why Are .Law Domains So Expensive?

The price of a TLD is solely determined by its registry. And niched TLDs are generally expensive than common TLDs. Minds + Machines Group Limited (MMX) is the registry operator for .law domains. MMX won the rights to the .law domain name in a private auction in 2014. They allow people that meet certain criteria to register for this TLD and solely set this high price.

Why Should You Always Choose The Most Common or Premium TLDs?

The reason traces back to the spammers. 

.xyz and .me are the cheapest TLDs, hence most spammers buy them in bulk and dump them when the domains are marked spam by spam protection services.

That’s why these types of domains generally rank lower on Google and emails from such domains are generally filtered out. 

When you use the most common TLDs, you’ll easily avoid such cases. And when you use industry-specific premium TLDs (.ai, .design, .lawyer, .dev), that’s even better.

However, use industry-specific premium TLDs wisely. Most people are generally familiar with .com or location-specific TLDs, like .co.uk, so using them might create a little bit of confusion.

What TLD Should You Choose?

1. If you can, go with .com, as it’s the most common. But it’s almost always unavailable for desired law firm names. If you’re an organization, you can use .org too. .net is the third most common TLD if you want to explore it.
2. If you serve any specific geographic area, it’s a good idea to use that. For example, .us, .ca, .co.uk, etc.
3. Use premium TLDs to include keywords in your domain name while keeping it short, or to register desired domain names that are unavailable in other TLDs. In the legal field, such TLDs include .law, .lawyer, .legal, .attorney, etc. The best part is that they show your niche, but make sure there is no existing strong brand with the common TLDs like .com.

For example, cohenlaw.com is already registered. But no website exists. So you may register cohen.law. But if cohenlaw.com was an established brand, you shouldn’t choose cohen.law.

Makes sense?

If you’re still unsure, feel free to join me in a quick meeting.

5. How To Name Your Law Firm?

I’ve detailed how you should name your law firm and provided tons of name ideas, feel free to check that out. Here, I’ll mention the 3 most important ways.

Option 1: Branded & Full Service Business

If your law firm provides all sorts of legal services, it’s highly recommended to choose a name that you can brand through marketing. Keep it short, sweet, easy to pronounce and memorable. 

A common practice in the legal niche is to use founder names to create the brand name, as I mentioned above. For example:

• AustinBlakeCohen.com
• AustinBlakeAndCohen.com
• AustinBlakeCohenLaw.com

However, as we discussed, you should keep your domain name short. You may use the first letters to form the domain name while using the full form on the homepage title and logo.

For example:

• ABC.com
• ABAndC.com
• ABCLaw.com

Note that domain names are case insensitive and used as lowercase letters. My example uses uppercase only to make it easy to read.

Option 2: Specialised Practice

If your law firm specializes in specific practices, let’s say injury law, then I’d suggest going for PMD as discussed above. This shows your brand name as well as includes a keyword, while also highlighting your focus practice, which builds a level of trust. 

Example could be:

• ABCLaw.com
• ABCLawyers.com
• ABC.Attorney

Option 3: Geographic Targeting

If your law firm serves a specific geographic area, then it’s a good idea to use EMD or PMD, as both work really well for local SEO. Similarly, it creates trust to your local audience. I recommend including any of the two geographic areas:

1. City (e.g. Denver)
2. State (e.g. Colorado)

You may use practice+location, which will almost always be an EMD, or brand+practice+location, which will be a PMD.

Example can be:

• CohenLawDenver.com
• ColoradoInjuryLawyers.com
• ABCTexas.com

How To Buy Your Lawyer Domain Name?

Now that you know what to avoid and what to consider while choosing a domain name, let me share with you a few more hacks on buying your law firm domain name. It will save you both time and money.

Step 1: Brainstorm A Few Names

First, think of the different names you might be interested in. Use the suggestions I already gave you or read my other blog post on law firm name ideas. You need a few ideas as your most desired names might always be registered and used by others. 

Don’t worry about the TLDs yet, you need the names only.

Step 2: Check Domin Name Availability in Bulk

Go to any bulk domain name checker like Namecheap or GoDaddy. 

Enter your seed keywords and select the TLDs you might be interested in. Namecheap gives you a few other options. I personally only set a price range up to $100, uncheck “Show Premiums”, and check “Hide Unavailable”. Based on your target and budget, you can choose other options.

Then search for domains  and choose from the returned result or modify your search.

Step 3: Choose a Domain Name Register

Namecheap and GoDaddy are the most popular choices for registering domain names. However, some country specific TLDs might not be available to them, for example .ie for Ireland. You have to find a local vendor for that.

Also, your hosting provider will definitely sell the most common TLDs. You can buy from them too. Just compare the initial and renewal pricing.

While I prefer Namecheap and GoDaddy for domain registration, I do not prefer them for web hosting. 

Step 4: Who To Choose For Hosting And Web Development?

Those are another level of headache, and most business owners won’t understand the importance of a high-end server. That’s why in my company Lawyer SEO Expert, we provide web hosting included in our web design and development services for lawyers. 

Please be advised that you may take hosting services from your web design or marketing service providers, but never allow access to your domain name to anyone. 

I’ve seen many business owners afraid to change their SEO or marketing team as they might harm the business, which does happen NGL. 

But when you have ownership of your domain and any recent backup, you can transfer your site to any other service provider in a very short period. It’s even possible if you don’t have any backup of the site, just the time will be longer. 

Talk to me if you’re in a similar situation with your current marketing team.

Should You Buy Expensive Domains Acquired by Others Already?

Well, it depends on your goal.

Tesla.com was sold for $11M in 2014, and fb.com was sold for $8.5M in 2010. Source.

Now if you want to buy any short, popular word, say attorney.com, it’s available for $6M.

You might find other domains within $10k. But the more common the name, the higher the price will be.

If you want to use such names, here are 4 things to consider before buying:

1. Is it a very common word or name?
2. Does it have a high search volume?
3. Does it have a good backlink profile?
4. Did it get any spam penalty by Google before?

The worth of the domain will depend on the answers to these questions.

Note that if you want to buy an expensive domain name for SEO benefits, it’s always better to talk to an expert. Cause this game is really complex.

Feel free to discuss this with me.

Conclusion

That’s a lot of information to process, and some might seem contradictory with others while they’re not. Cause you have to balance among all the suggestions I have made. Choosing the right domain name is the first crucial step in your business, and if you want to change it in the future, that will cost you a lot. Not just in terms of money but also lost business, brand recognition, hard work, and many more.

That’s why I always suggest to consult an expert if you’re serious about the business.

Overall, this is what we discussed in this article as part of choosing the right domain name for your law firm business:

• Domain and URL Length: keep it short and descriptive. If the domain itself is long, the URL will always be long. 
• Branded vs. EMD vs. PMD: Branded domains are best for scaling the business in the future, EMD makes local SEO very easy, and PMD is a balance between the two. 
• Numbers and Hyphens in Domain Name: Never include them. At most, you may include the most common numbers like 247, 360, 365, etc., but I personally don’t recommend them.
• TLDs or Domain Extensions (.com, .us, .lawyer, etc.): For general TLDs, use .com or .org, maybe .net too. Location-specific TLDs are also great, like .us, .ca, .co.uk, if you serve a specific location. Field-related TLDs are good too but pricey, like .lawyer, .attorney, etc. However, don’t go with cheaper TLDs that are mostly used in spammy sites, like .xyz, .me, etc. 
• How To Name Your Law Firm: If you’re a full-service law firm, go with branded names. If you focus on a specific practice, include that as it will show expertise and also give a bit benefit in SEO. If you serve any specific city or state, include that for the same reason. 
• How To Buy Your Lawyer Domain Name: Brainstorm a few name ideas, select your target TLDs, bulk search the domain availability, choose the domain you like, register it, and hire an expert team like us for web development and marketing. 

If you need any help, feel free to book a meeting with me.