you're just starting out on the Internet, choosing a domain name is one of the first major decisions you will have to make. I won't say that choosing a name for your site will determine the overall success or failure of your online business. It will, however, affect almost every aspect of your business. Finding a good domain name requires extensive planning.
I would like to offer some tips for successfully choosing a domain name:
1) Use the .COM extension. This is still the number one choice for the majority of online businesses. While, .NET,.ORG,.INFO,.BIZ, and .US are viable alternatives they are not as widely recognized as .COM. The .COM extension will immediately give you and your business more credibility. Also, because we are creatures of habit many people automatically include .COM when typing in almost any web address, so why not capitalize on human nature?
2) Keep it Short. Whenever possible your domain name should not be longer than 13-15 characters, numbers, or hyphens. It is much more difficult for the average person to remember longer variations of a web address.
3) Make it Sticky. You want your domain name to be easy to remember. Make it stick out in people's minds. Be creative. Be Unique.
4) Minimize Confusion. You should never lose a prospective customer because they misspelled your domain name, or they used the wrong extension. If you can afford it, register other variations of your domain name and have them redirect to your main site.
5) Include Keywords in Your Domain Name. Try to include at least 1 and if possible 2 keywords in your domain name. Many of the experts believe this can help with the way some of the search engines index and rank your site.
6) Be Descriptive. Your domain name should have something to do with your business. Make it descriptive of your site, your product offerings, or your service.
7) Search for Deleted Domain Names. Domain names that were once registered but have expired turn up every day. With some research you might be able to find one of these names that would be a good fit for your business. You can search for deleted domains
8) Check for Trademarks. You should do this before registering your domain name. Search as many existing trademarks as possible and look for possible conflicts. Obviously you want to choose a name that is unlikely to cause you any legal problems.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
DOMAINS NAMES FOR SEO
How To Select A Domain Name
Google tends to give weight to keywords in the domain name. This increases the importance of selecting a good name.
When choosing a domain name for SEO purposes, there are three main factors to consider:
Brand
Rankability
Linkability
Brand
Should you use hyphenated, multi-term domain like search-engine-marketing-services.com?
I'd avoid such names like the plague.
Why?
They have no branding value. They have limited SEO value. Even if you do manage to get such a domain top ten, you're probably going to need to sell on the first visit, as few people are going to remember it once they leave. It is too generic, and it lacks credibility.
In a crowded market, brand offers a point of distinction.
It is easier to build links to branded domain names. People take these name more seriously that keyword-keyword-keyword-keyword.com, which looks spammy and isn't fooling anyone. Would you link to such a name? By doing so, it devalues your own content .
It can even difficult to get such domain names linked to when you pay for the privilege! Directory editors often reject these names on sight, because such names are often associated with low-quality content. Imagine how many free links you might be losing by choosing such a
name.
Is there a downside to using branded names?
Yes.
Unless you have a huge marketing budget, no one is going to search for perseefgxcbtrfy.com, which is a new killer, brand I just made up ;)
Thankfully, there is a happy medium between brand and SEO strategy.
Rankability
SEOs release the value of keywords. When naming your site, and deciding on a domain name, try combining the lessons of SEO, branding and domaining.
Genric + term is a good approach to use. Take your chosen keyword, and simply add another word on the end. SeoBook, Travelocity, FlightsCity, CarHub, etc. These words have SEO value built into them, because people are forced to use your keywords in the link. Also, Google (currently) values a keyword within the domain name for ranking purposes. Finally, such a name retains an element of unique branding.
These types of domain names score high on the rank-ability and link-ability meter. They are generic enough to rank well for the keyword term, yet contain just enough branding difference to be memorable.
The SEO Advantage
There is another advantage for SEOs in the domain space.
Dot com's can sell for 5-20 times as much as a .org or .net. Keyword + .com can sell for millions of dollars, depending on the domain name.
Expensive, huh.
But...
By registering or buying the cheaper .net or .org equivilent, building out the site, and ranking well for the keyword + net, or +org, you increase the value of the domain name markedly. Sure, you're one step away from pure domaineering and you still have Google to contend with, but you'll be head and shoulders above those who are undervaluing these names.
A lot of domaineers aren't operating in this space.
Yet.
Other Tips And Ideas
Leave The Keyword Out Entirely
Used the related search function on Google ~ + keyword and see if any of the related keyword terms fit. This can be a good strategy to use if all the good generic keyword names are gone. It might get you close enough to the action, without the enormous price tag. Might be more memorable, too.
Google tends to give weight to keywords in the domain name. This increases the importance of selecting a good name.
When choosing a domain name for SEO purposes, there are three main factors to consider:
Brand
Rankability
Linkability
Brand
Should you use hyphenated, multi-term domain like search-engine-marketing-services.com?
I'd avoid such names like the plague.
Why?
They have no branding value. They have limited SEO value. Even if you do manage to get such a domain top ten, you're probably going to need to sell on the first visit, as few people are going to remember it once they leave. It is too generic, and it lacks credibility.
In a crowded market, brand offers a point of distinction.
It is easier to build links to branded domain names. People take these name more seriously that keyword-keyword-keyword-keyword.com, which looks spammy and isn't fooling anyone. Would you link to such a name? By doing so, it devalues your own content .
It can even difficult to get such domain names linked to when you pay for the privilege! Directory editors often reject these names on sight, because such names are often associated with low-quality content. Imagine how many free links you might be losing by choosing such a
name.
Is there a downside to using branded names?
Yes.
Unless you have a huge marketing budget, no one is going to search for perseefgxcbtrfy.com, which is a new killer, brand I just made up ;)
Thankfully, there is a happy medium between brand and SEO strategy.
Rankability
SEOs release the value of keywords. When naming your site, and deciding on a domain name, try combining the lessons of SEO, branding and domaining.
Genric + term is a good approach to use. Take your chosen keyword, and simply add another word on the end. SeoBook, Travelocity, FlightsCity, CarHub, etc. These words have SEO value built into them, because people are forced to use your keywords in the link. Also, Google (currently) values a keyword within the domain name for ranking purposes. Finally, such a name retains an element of unique branding.
These types of domain names score high on the rank-ability and link-ability meter. They are generic enough to rank well for the keyword term, yet contain just enough branding difference to be memorable.
The SEO Advantage
There is another advantage for SEOs in the domain space.
Dot com's can sell for 5-20 times as much as a .org or .net. Keyword + .com can sell for millions of dollars, depending on the domain name.
Expensive, huh.
But...
By registering or buying the cheaper .net or .org equivilent, building out the site, and ranking well for the keyword + net, or +org, you increase the value of the domain name markedly. Sure, you're one step away from pure domaineering and you still have Google to contend with, but you'll be head and shoulders above those who are undervaluing these names.
A lot of domaineers aren't operating in this space.
Yet.
Other Tips And Ideas
Leave The Keyword Out Entirely
Used the related search function on Google ~ + keyword and see if any of the related keyword terms fit. This can be a good strategy to use if all the good generic keyword names are gone. It might get you close enough to the action, without the enormous price tag. Might be more memorable, too.
ABOUT DOT NAME
DNS Structure: New Top Level Domains
About Dot-Name
.name -- for individuals
.name is for for individuals and their personal web sites. It is run by Global Name Registry, a UK-based commercial company. This one serves a useful purpose, since the current domain structure offers no particular place for personal sites -- thus, of all the new TLDs, this one has the strongest justification on the basis of a strictly logical namespace. The structure of .name lets people register only third-level domains so that nobody can monopolize an entire surname; you have to get john.smith.name. For any domain suffix that's a complete English word, try actually reading a domain name under it out loud with the dots treated as spaces, and see if it makes a reasonable phrase. The current .net works pretty well; the domain ibm.net refers to the "IBM Net". The .info and .museum domains in this new plan also work; many likely names under them can be read out loud reasonably, like west-podunk.art.museum. On the other hand, "John Smith Name" sounds funny. Anyway, all domain names are names. Normally, the top-level domain gives some indication of what type of entity the name is for, like .com for commercial operations and .org for organizations. By that standard, the earlier-proposed .per for personal sites would make more sense.
This new domain still has great potential if it can be marketed well to the millions of Internet users who don't yet have personal domain names; there's a definite advantage to having one which you can use for your e-mail and Web address and keep from having it tied to your ISP, employment, geographical location, or other potentially changeable things. (Several recent cases of people being forced en masse to change their email addresses due to the corporate machinations of their ISPs add strength to this argument.)
The official site has some talk about how .name domains will somehow be used to let people make their personal information available to merchants and others needing it, but no details are given of how this is to be accomplished, and how security will be maintained for this.
The first batch of names were supposed to go live on December 13, 2001, with applications accepted until November 22, but the launch date was pushed to January 15, 2002 instead. It went live on schedule, and you can now look up the names in their WHOIS. Unfortunately, they were only processing updates of domain records (name servers, contacts, etc.) every two weeks along with new batches of names.
Although domain registrations in .name are done at the third level, the registry also made available email forwarding services at the second level. Technically this is a separate registration from the domain name, but some registrars provide this at no extra charge along with registration of a .name domain while others charge extra.
About Dot-Name
.name -- for individuals
.name is for for individuals and their personal web sites. It is run by Global Name Registry, a UK-based commercial company. This one serves a useful purpose, since the current domain structure offers no particular place for personal sites -- thus, of all the new TLDs, this one has the strongest justification on the basis of a strictly logical namespace. The structure of .name lets people register only third-level domains so that nobody can monopolize an entire surname; you have to get john.smith.name. For any domain suffix that's a complete English word, try actually reading a domain name under it out loud with the dots treated as spaces, and see if it makes a reasonable phrase. The current .net works pretty well; the domain ibm.net refers to the "IBM Net". The .info and .museum domains in this new plan also work; many likely names under them can be read out loud reasonably, like west-podunk.art.museum. On the other hand, "John Smith Name" sounds funny. Anyway, all domain names are names. Normally, the top-level domain gives some indication of what type of entity the name is for, like .com for commercial operations and .org for organizations. By that standard, the earlier-proposed .per for personal sites would make more sense.
This new domain still has great potential if it can be marketed well to the millions of Internet users who don't yet have personal domain names; there's a definite advantage to having one which you can use for your e-mail and Web address and keep from having it tied to your ISP, employment, geographical location, or other potentially changeable things. (Several recent cases of people being forced en masse to change their email addresses due to the corporate machinations of their ISPs add strength to this argument.)
The official site has some talk about how .name domains will somehow be used to let people make their personal information available to merchants and others needing it, but no details are given of how this is to be accomplished, and how security will be maintained for this.
The first batch of names were supposed to go live on December 13, 2001, with applications accepted until November 22, but the launch date was pushed to January 15, 2002 instead. It went live on schedule, and you can now look up the names in their WHOIS. Unfortunately, they were only processing updates of domain records (name servers, contacts, etc.) every two weeks along with new batches of names.
Although domain registrations in .name are done at the third level, the registry also made available email forwarding services at the second level. Technically this is a separate registration from the domain name, but some registrars provide this at no extra charge along with registration of a .name domain while others charge extra.
WHAT IS DOMAIN AND THE BEST
address of your site and can end in .com, .net, .org, .info, .us, .biz, .tv and more, which we call the Domain Extentions. You have many domain extentions for choice, but the most common one is .com. And each country can have their own domain extention as well, such as ".co.uk" is a domain from UK, ".cn" is for China and ".jp" for Japan. So before you apply for a domain name, you will need to decide a domain extentions for your web site based on your target readers, if it's worldwide, .com is the best choice for you, but if you want to only target Chinese, you can choose .cn (.com is also a good choice since it's so common).
How to Select the Best Domain Name
Below are some tips for selecting a domain name:
Register a name that contains your major keywords, such as you design a web site to guide people how to find the web hosting solution, it would be better to include ‘webhosting” or “hosting” in the domain name, such “webhostingclue”, “hostingclue”, etc. This should be followed if being found in the major search engines (Google, MSN, etc.) is extremely important to you.
Think about it. The average surfer searches by subject, not by proper name. So why it may seem cool to have a name like RaysTool.com for Software development site, you’ll want to choose a name that includes keywords that your target audience would likely use when they search.
So with that in mind, a name like RaysDevTool.com would be much better than RaysTool.com.
If the domain is for a company, you might want to put your company name in domain. I think it’s fine if your company is famous or attracting free traffic to your web site is not important. But keep in mind that you need to advertise the whole domain instead of the feature of your site. Such as if you create a site for webhosting with domain name “whc”, please make sure you promote your site a lot as “whc.com” to increase the influence of Brand “whc”, and usually, it take money and time.
Very often that you can’t get the domain name you want, someone else has got it registered. You can try to add “the”, ”my”, or “your” to your favorite domain name, it’s still a good choice. But people are likely to forget to affix the necessary “the” or “my”. For that reason, you need to advertise the site with full domain name, such as “thewebhostingclue.com” instead of “webhosting”.Try not to use the plural form of the domain name, it’s more possible that the visitor failing to type the “s” than affix “the” or “my”.
Don’t register domain names that are too long and have too many syllables if you can help it. Yes, you can register names up to 67 characters long, but that doesn’t mean you have to use all 67 characters.
You want your name to be easy to remember. Not everyone will bookmark your page initially so try to think of something that can be easily remembered — although I realize this may be tricky since a lot of names are taken these days.
Try to register the short name which is meaningful, don’t make it too abbreviated, such as make webhostingclue to whc, it would be hard to remember and nobody will know what the site is for unless you want to promote whc to be well known brand, and it’s usually very hard and need a lot of money.
Meaningful web site is very important even sometimes it make domain name longer, since it have an advantage in that they fare better in a number of search engines. The latter give preference to keywords that are also found in your domain names. So, for example, if you have a site on web hosting with a domain name like cheapwebhosting.com, it might fare better in a search for “cheap web hosting” than the site like onlinemoneyclue.com.
Try don’t use hyphens as much as possible. Beside it’s a pain in the neck to type, the user tend to forget to type hyphens, and when they forget it, it’s very possible that they will be directed to your competitor’s site.
But in the other word, the non-hyphenated form may no longer be available. At least this way, you still get the domain you want. And search engines (such as Google) can distinguish your keywords better and thus return your site more prominently in search results for those keywords occurring in your domain name.
So Personally, I prefer to avoid hyphenated names if I can, but I guess it really depends on your domain name and your situation. Before you register a domain with hyphens, try to think about a alternative domain name.
Register the appropriate domain extension for your web site. The answer for it is not as straightforward as you might think. If your website is to local community, such as you target at the people living in UK, it would be better that you register after co.uk. And actually, you will benefit from having such a local domain because the people there know that they are dealing with a local entity, which is what they want. Such as: they might tend to order a pizza from pizza.co.uk and not pizza.com.
But if your website is to international, it would be better to get a extension as “.com”, “.org” etc. You will get some benefit from it, for example? If you get a country specific domain, people might think that your business only caters to that country. But for others, we know it’s internalized.? Each extension has their own meaning, such as .org actually describes the non-profit nature of their organization. And .com is a common extension for all, if you type webhostingclue in browse, it will automatically direct to webhostingclue.com before attempting other extension like “.net”, etc.
As you can see, there are actually good grounds for accepting any domain extensions. My personal footnote to the above arguments is that if you get a domain name with an extension other than “.com”, make sure that you promote your business or website with the full domain name. For example, if your domain name is “onlinemoneyclue.net”, make sure that when you advertise your site or business, call it “onlinemoneyclue.net” not “onlinemoneyclue”. Otherwise people will assume a “.com” extension and travel to the wrong place.
Protect your name by registering multiple extensions (.net, .org, etc.) This deters people from copying your name. For example, if you own garden-tips-for-us.com you can also register garden-tips-for-us.net and any other extension that’s available.
You don’t have to build a site on all the domains, but you can reserve the others to keep people (copycats) from registering them.
Protect Your Privacy
As you're registering your name, you will be presented with the option of keeping your domain name private - a deluxe feature you'll probably want to take advantage of.
A private domain registration will keep your information (name, email address, etc.) out of the global Internet database, and will prevent a lot of spam from reaching your email box.
How to Select the Best Domain Name
Below are some tips for selecting a domain name:
Register a name that contains your major keywords, such as you design a web site to guide people how to find the web hosting solution, it would be better to include ‘webhosting” or “hosting” in the domain name, such “webhostingclue”, “hostingclue”, etc. This should be followed if being found in the major search engines (Google, MSN, etc.) is extremely important to you.
Think about it. The average surfer searches by subject, not by proper name. So why it may seem cool to have a name like RaysTool.com for Software development site, you’ll want to choose a name that includes keywords that your target audience would likely use when they search.
So with that in mind, a name like RaysDevTool.com would be much better than RaysTool.com.
If the domain is for a company, you might want to put your company name in domain. I think it’s fine if your company is famous or attracting free traffic to your web site is not important. But keep in mind that you need to advertise the whole domain instead of the feature of your site. Such as if you create a site for webhosting with domain name “whc”, please make sure you promote your site a lot as “whc.com” to increase the influence of Brand “whc”, and usually, it take money and time.
Very often that you can’t get the domain name you want, someone else has got it registered. You can try to add “the”, ”my”, or “your” to your favorite domain name, it’s still a good choice. But people are likely to forget to affix the necessary “the” or “my”. For that reason, you need to advertise the site with full domain name, such as “thewebhostingclue.com” instead of “webhosting”.Try not to use the plural form of the domain name, it’s more possible that the visitor failing to type the “s” than affix “the” or “my”.
Don’t register domain names that are too long and have too many syllables if you can help it. Yes, you can register names up to 67 characters long, but that doesn’t mean you have to use all 67 characters.
You want your name to be easy to remember. Not everyone will bookmark your page initially so try to think of something that can be easily remembered — although I realize this may be tricky since a lot of names are taken these days.
Try to register the short name which is meaningful, don’t make it too abbreviated, such as make webhostingclue to whc, it would be hard to remember and nobody will know what the site is for unless you want to promote whc to be well known brand, and it’s usually very hard and need a lot of money.
Meaningful web site is very important even sometimes it make domain name longer, since it have an advantage in that they fare better in a number of search engines. The latter give preference to keywords that are also found in your domain names. So, for example, if you have a site on web hosting with a domain name like cheapwebhosting.com, it might fare better in a search for “cheap web hosting” than the site like onlinemoneyclue.com.
Try don’t use hyphens as much as possible. Beside it’s a pain in the neck to type, the user tend to forget to type hyphens, and when they forget it, it’s very possible that they will be directed to your competitor’s site.
But in the other word, the non-hyphenated form may no longer be available. At least this way, you still get the domain you want. And search engines (such as Google) can distinguish your keywords better and thus return your site more prominently in search results for those keywords occurring in your domain name.
So Personally, I prefer to avoid hyphenated names if I can, but I guess it really depends on your domain name and your situation. Before you register a domain with hyphens, try to think about a alternative domain name.
Register the appropriate domain extension for your web site. The answer for it is not as straightforward as you might think. If your website is to local community, such as you target at the people living in UK, it would be better that you register after co.uk. And actually, you will benefit from having such a local domain because the people there know that they are dealing with a local entity, which is what they want. Such as: they might tend to order a pizza from pizza.co.uk and not pizza.com.
But if your website is to international, it would be better to get a extension as “.com”, “.org” etc. You will get some benefit from it, for example? If you get a country specific domain, people might think that your business only caters to that country. But for others, we know it’s internalized.? Each extension has their own meaning, such as .org actually describes the non-profit nature of their organization. And .com is a common extension for all, if you type webhostingclue in browse, it will automatically direct to webhostingclue.com before attempting other extension like “.net”, etc.
As you can see, there are actually good grounds for accepting any domain extensions. My personal footnote to the above arguments is that if you get a domain name with an extension other than “.com”, make sure that you promote your business or website with the full domain name. For example, if your domain name is “onlinemoneyclue.net”, make sure that when you advertise your site or business, call it “onlinemoneyclue.net” not “onlinemoneyclue”. Otherwise people will assume a “.com” extension and travel to the wrong place.
Protect your name by registering multiple extensions (.net, .org, etc.) This deters people from copying your name. For example, if you own garden-tips-for-us.com you can also register garden-tips-for-us.net and any other extension that’s available.
You don’t have to build a site on all the domains, but you can reserve the others to keep people (copycats) from registering them.
Protect Your Privacy
As you're registering your name, you will be presented with the option of keeping your domain name private - a deluxe feature you'll probably want to take advantage of.
A private domain registration will keep your information (name, email address, etc.) out of the global Internet database, and will prevent a lot of spam from reaching your email box.
HOW TO CHOOSE GREAT DOMAIN
about using only two or three words. These are your main keywords for your website.
Using these keywords in your domain name will tell people exactly what your site is about. For example, if we are building a website that focuses on cat supplies, the domain name "catsupplies.com" tells people exactly what the website is about. On the other hand, "cats.com" suggests that the website is about cats in general, but not specifically about cat supplies.
Using keywords in your domain also helps you gain better search engine rankings. Search engines give more value to domain names that contain the keywords that people are searching for, and will rank websites that have the specific keyword in the domain name higher.
Your Domain Name Should Be Your Website Name
This may seem like common sense, but your website name should match your domain name. Having your website name and domain name the same makes it easier for people to remember and return to your website. For this reason, it is best to hold off on choosing a website name until you have registered a domain name.
What if you already have an established offline business? You should definitely try to get your business name as your domain name.
Your Domain Name Should Be Easy to Say, Spell, and Remember
You want to make sure that your domain name is easy to remember, especially after people see it or hear it. If you were to tell someone what your domain name is, would they know how to spell it?
Make sure that none of the words in your domain name can easily be confused with another word. For example, maneattraction.com and mainattraction.com sound the same, but are spelled different.
Another thing to consider is different variations of the same word. For example, if you were to tell someone that your website is womansforum.com, there is the possibility that they would type in womensforum.com when searching for your website.
Keep Your Domain Name As Short As Possible
Even though the majority of short domain names (single word domains) have already been taken, you still want to keep your domain name as short as possible.
A domain name can be up to 67 characters long, but you don't want to take up all 67 characters. This is because people won't be able to remember it, much less spell it without mistakes. For our cat supply example, the following domain name would probably not be a good choice: thebestcatsuppliesandproductsaround.com.
Choose The Most Appropriate Extension For Your Domain
An extension is what appears at the end of your domain name. Domains that end with .com are the most common and are shown by the search engines first, above the .net (networks), .org (non-profit organizations) and .biz (business) extensions.
If you have a highly recognized business, I would suggest registering not only the .com form of your domain name, but also the .org, .net, and .biz forms as well. This can help prevent the dilution of your domain name.
Country-Specific Domain Extensions
You can also choose a country specific extension if your business only serves and operates in a specific country. Here are some country specific extensions (there are also extensions for other countries that aren't listed here)
.ca is for Canada
.fr is for France
.us is for the United States
.uk is for the United Kingdom
Country specific domain names will have a top-level country code (i.e. uk) and a subcategory code such as .co (for commercial enterprises) or .org (for non-commercial organizations). For example, catsupplies.co.uk would be for a commercial cat supply company based and serving the United Kingdom.
Remember, if you get a domain name that has an extension other than .com, be sure that you promote your website name with the full domain name.
How to pick a great domain name: Doing your research
Write down the main concept keywords for your website, as well as any benefits that visitors might get from your website. If you have a physical business, write down your business name as well.
Now you can begin your search for possible domain names. To do this, you can use the following the steps below:
Under Step 1 choose Domain Names from the drop-down menu.
Under Step 2 choose Domain Namer and Availability Checker from the drop-down.
Under Step 3 type in your main website keyword.
Under Step 4 type in your secondary descriptive keyword
Click the Search It button
When you click on "Click Here to See Your Results", it will take you to Domain Tools, which lists results for possible domain names that contain your keywords. Domain Tools usually returns more than one page of possible domain names, so be sure to check all of the pages for possible domain names.
Look for domain names with the .com extension
If the domain name has an open circle by it, it signifies that it is available. Concentrate on the available domain names that have the .com or the .net extensions, which are the most common.
Another point to consider is that the Internet Explorer browser automatically inserts .com at the end when someone types in a website name into the address bar without putting an extension on it.
It would be a shame to send visitors to your competition just because they registered their domain with the .com extension and you didn't.
You can also search for domain names that don't have hyphens by clicking on the "new search" button at the top of the Domain Tools page. Make sure that you check the "no" button for the "Hyphens" option at the top.
Using these keywords in your domain name will tell people exactly what your site is about. For example, if we are building a website that focuses on cat supplies, the domain name "catsupplies.com" tells people exactly what the website is about. On the other hand, "cats.com" suggests that the website is about cats in general, but not specifically about cat supplies.
Using keywords in your domain also helps you gain better search engine rankings. Search engines give more value to domain names that contain the keywords that people are searching for, and will rank websites that have the specific keyword in the domain name higher.
Your Domain Name Should Be Your Website Name
This may seem like common sense, but your website name should match your domain name. Having your website name and domain name the same makes it easier for people to remember and return to your website. For this reason, it is best to hold off on choosing a website name until you have registered a domain name.
What if you already have an established offline business? You should definitely try to get your business name as your domain name.
Your Domain Name Should Be Easy to Say, Spell, and Remember
You want to make sure that your domain name is easy to remember, especially after people see it or hear it. If you were to tell someone what your domain name is, would they know how to spell it?
Make sure that none of the words in your domain name can easily be confused with another word. For example, maneattraction.com and mainattraction.com sound the same, but are spelled different.
Another thing to consider is different variations of the same word. For example, if you were to tell someone that your website is womansforum.com, there is the possibility that they would type in womensforum.com when searching for your website.
Keep Your Domain Name As Short As Possible
Even though the majority of short domain names (single word domains) have already been taken, you still want to keep your domain name as short as possible.
A domain name can be up to 67 characters long, but you don't want to take up all 67 characters. This is because people won't be able to remember it, much less spell it without mistakes. For our cat supply example, the following domain name would probably not be a good choice: thebestcatsuppliesandproductsaround.com.
Choose The Most Appropriate Extension For Your Domain
An extension is what appears at the end of your domain name. Domains that end with .com are the most common and are shown by the search engines first, above the .net (networks), .org (non-profit organizations) and .biz (business) extensions.
If you have a highly recognized business, I would suggest registering not only the .com form of your domain name, but also the .org, .net, and .biz forms as well. This can help prevent the dilution of your domain name.
Country-Specific Domain Extensions
You can also choose a country specific extension if your business only serves and operates in a specific country. Here are some country specific extensions (there are also extensions for other countries that aren't listed here)
.ca is for Canada
.fr is for France
.us is for the United States
.uk is for the United Kingdom
Country specific domain names will have a top-level country code (i.e. uk) and a subcategory code such as .co (for commercial enterprises) or .org (for non-commercial organizations). For example, catsupplies.co.uk would be for a commercial cat supply company based and serving the United Kingdom.
Remember, if you get a domain name that has an extension other than .com, be sure that you promote your website name with the full domain name.
How to pick a great domain name: Doing your research
Write down the main concept keywords for your website, as well as any benefits that visitors might get from your website. If you have a physical business, write down your business name as well.
Now you can begin your search for possible domain names. To do this, you can use the following the steps below:
Under Step 1 choose Domain Names from the drop-down menu.
Under Step 2 choose Domain Namer and Availability Checker from the drop-down.
Under Step 3 type in your main website keyword.
Under Step 4 type in your secondary descriptive keyword
Click the Search It button
When you click on "Click Here to See Your Results", it will take you to Domain Tools, which lists results for possible domain names that contain your keywords. Domain Tools usually returns more than one page of possible domain names, so be sure to check all of the pages for possible domain names.
Look for domain names with the .com extension
If the domain name has an open circle by it, it signifies that it is available. Concentrate on the available domain names that have the .com or the .net extensions, which are the most common.
Another point to consider is that the Internet Explorer browser automatically inserts .com at the end when someone types in a website name into the address bar without putting an extension on it.
It would be a shame to send visitors to your competition just because they registered their domain with the .com extension and you didn't.
You can also search for domain names that don't have hyphens by clicking on the "new search" button at the top of the Domain Tools page. Make sure that you check the "no" button for the "Hyphens" option at the top.
SELECT GOOD DOMAIN
Today, registering a domain name is not an expensive thing. But that was not the case a few years ago. It was the fierce competition that lowered the prices, despite the fact that the demand had grown noticeably too. Most businesses and many individual people have a domain name of their own. If a domain name is for a personal site, most of the tips that I give here are not particularly useful, but if that domain name is for a website that has to generate revenue, then you should definitely read this article and learn how to choose a good domain name.
Various thoughts
Surprise! Internet's population keeps on getting smarter. And pickier! People expect a business website to have its own domain. Luckily, it's so cheap to register a domain name, that this shouldn't be a problem. Even with the most expensive registrar you will not pay more than $30 to own that domain name for whole year. Most registrars though, will charge under $15 per year.
So far it's simple! To get your site to be respected by other people you must prove that you respect it yourself. That's why you should choose a good domain name and register it.
For those of you not yet sure about buying a domain name, I will present some of the other benefits of a domain name. For instance, if you decide to change hosts, you'll not lose all those money and the effort invested to make you website's URL popular (URL=Universal Resource Locator; e.g. yahoo.com). You'll be free to choose whatever host you like, because the URL to your website will remain the same: your domain. If you would've used a subdomain given by your host, changing the host, would've meant changing the URL too.
Another reason to register a domain name: people. The shorter the URL, the easier it can be remembered! It's not hard to realize which is easier to recall between
And that's not everything. You have to take into account the fact that most people type the URLs in their browser. Yes, you will say that doesn't happen very often, but statistics showed that in 2001 about 52% of all sites received their visitors this way. Huh? - you might say. What about the search engines? Well, it's simple. People do search for new sites in the search engines, but once they find those sites, they remember them - if they have easy to remember domain names, of course. And they type the URL directly in their browser when they want to revisit.
Conclusion? Get a domain name for your website. But not any domain. Choose a good domain name, a catchy one! One that tells what your site is about or with what it is different from other similar sites. Make it easy to remember!
A website's name is much like a person's name. If it's easy to remember then it's easy to refer to it (and recommend it). In a certain sense it's more important, because you can point out a certain person by, lets say, his father's or brother's name, but on the Internet it's virtually impossible to point out a site in any way without referring to it's domain name (excepting the IP address, but we can't consider that an option).
Think about the domain name like it would be a child's name. Once set, you can't change your mind (you can, but you really don't want to go through all that trouble). So you must choose a good domain name, one that will last for a lifetime.
To improve the ranking in the indexes and other lists of sites, it would be a good idea to choose a domain name that starts with "a" or "b", or even better, with a number, like in the these examples: "123money.com", "allaboutbooks.net", "autosubmission.org". Note that these are just examples. I don't know if they are already registered and I don't have any affiliation with any of them in case they exist. But I can tell you that the people who registered them (if anyone) have done a great job in selecting the name (if it is content related of course).
A domain name is as short as possible. That makes it easy to remember. As a rule, a good domain name has under 15 characters. That's should be enough for two or three words.
A very touted idea is to choose a domain name that includes your most important keywords. The idea is that the search engines give you a boost in the search results for the words included in the domain name. However, experience proved that this isn't such an important factor in the search engines' algorithm. Most search engines do take these the words in the domain name into account, but it seems that they don't consider these words to be more important than those included in the page.
That's why I recommend to stick to the short domain names and, but only if possible, try to include some of your most important keywords. Long domain names are rather annoying and harder to remember than shorter ones. Oh! I almost forgot! If you want the search engines to be able to read the keywords that you include in your domain's name you have to use hyphens. That means you should register my-most-important-keywords.com, not
mymostimportantkeywords.com. Hyphens though, make an otherwise good domain name become difficult to read, and thus difficult to remember. "My hyphen most hyphen important hyphen keywords dot com" is definitely hard to remember. :-)
If you're trying to choose a good domain name for a business selling white widgets, then go for whitewidgets.com, not whitewidget.com.
In my examples I kept on using "dot com". And I recommend you to choose a ".com" domain name for a website that markets products in US or internationally. Otherwise I recommend using ".au" for example, if you're marketing in Australia.
Final words
Now that you know how to choose a good domain name, put on paper every single domain name that crosses your mind. Then select those that you feel to be the best and see if and which ones are still available. You can find that out at any domain registering service by trying to register the domain. If someone else has registered it already, you will get a message such as "the domain is not available".
Well, that's about it. I hope you learned something today. If you have any questions, please e-mail me.
Oh, here's a short list places where you can buy a domain name online:
Various thoughts
Surprise! Internet's population keeps on getting smarter. And pickier! People expect a business website to have its own domain. Luckily, it's so cheap to register a domain name, that this shouldn't be a problem. Even with the most expensive registrar you will not pay more than $30 to own that domain name for whole year. Most registrars though, will charge under $15 per year.
So far it's simple! To get your site to be respected by other people you must prove that you respect it yourself. That's why you should choose a good domain name and register it.
For those of you not yet sure about buying a domain name, I will present some of the other benefits of a domain name. For instance, if you decide to change hosts, you'll not lose all those money and the effort invested to make you website's URL popular (URL=Universal Resource Locator; e.g. yahoo.com). You'll be free to choose whatever host you like, because the URL to your website will remain the same: your domain. If you would've used a subdomain given by your host, changing the host, would've meant changing the URL too.
Another reason to register a domain name: people. The shorter the URL, the easier it can be remembered! It's not hard to realize which is easier to recall between
And that's not everything. You have to take into account the fact that most people type the URLs in their browser. Yes, you will say that doesn't happen very often, but statistics showed that in 2001 about 52% of all sites received their visitors this way. Huh? - you might say. What about the search engines? Well, it's simple. People do search for new sites in the search engines, but once they find those sites, they remember them - if they have easy to remember domain names, of course. And they type the URL directly in their browser when they want to revisit.
Conclusion? Get a domain name for your website. But not any domain. Choose a good domain name, a catchy one! One that tells what your site is about or with what it is different from other similar sites. Make it easy to remember!
A website's name is much like a person's name. If it's easy to remember then it's easy to refer to it (and recommend it). In a certain sense it's more important, because you can point out a certain person by, lets say, his father's or brother's name, but on the Internet it's virtually impossible to point out a site in any way without referring to it's domain name (excepting the IP address, but we can't consider that an option).
Think about the domain name like it would be a child's name. Once set, you can't change your mind (you can, but you really don't want to go through all that trouble). So you must choose a good domain name, one that will last for a lifetime.
To improve the ranking in the indexes and other lists of sites, it would be a good idea to choose a domain name that starts with "a" or "b", or even better, with a number, like in the these examples: "123money.com", "allaboutbooks.net", "autosubmission.org". Note that these are just examples. I don't know if they are already registered and I don't have any affiliation with any of them in case they exist. But I can tell you that the people who registered them (if anyone) have done a great job in selecting the name (if it is content related of course).
A domain name is as short as possible. That makes it easy to remember. As a rule, a good domain name has under 15 characters. That's should be enough for two or three words.
A very touted idea is to choose a domain name that includes your most important keywords. The idea is that the search engines give you a boost in the search results for the words included in the domain name. However, experience proved that this isn't such an important factor in the search engines' algorithm. Most search engines do take these the words in the domain name into account, but it seems that they don't consider these words to be more important than those included in the page.
That's why I recommend to stick to the short domain names and, but only if possible, try to include some of your most important keywords. Long domain names are rather annoying and harder to remember than shorter ones. Oh! I almost forgot! If you want the search engines to be able to read the keywords that you include in your domain's name you have to use hyphens. That means you should register my-most-important-keywords.com, not
mymostimportantkeywords.com. Hyphens though, make an otherwise good domain name become difficult to read, and thus difficult to remember. "My hyphen most hyphen important hyphen keywords dot com" is definitely hard to remember. :-)
If you're trying to choose a good domain name for a business selling white widgets, then go for whitewidgets.com, not whitewidget.com.
In my examples I kept on using "dot com". And I recommend you to choose a ".com" domain name for a website that markets products in US or internationally. Otherwise I recommend using ".au" for example, if you're marketing in Australia.
Final words
Now that you know how to choose a good domain name, put on paper every single domain name that crosses your mind. Then select those that you feel to be the best and see if and which ones are still available. You can find that out at any domain registering service by trying to register the domain. If someone else has registered it already, you will get a message such as "the domain is not available".
Well, that's about it. I hope you learned something today. If you have any questions, please e-mail me.
Oh, here's a short list places where you can buy a domain name online:
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