Choosing A Domain Name - The Important Stuff

Find the perfect domain name for your website or business can be as easy as type and click. Simply enter your preferred keywords into the "Domain Suggestion Tool" software and click. The software will deliver the most frequently-searched keywords. All you have to do is choose one of them and regsiter. You instantly have a domain that contains some of the most searched keyphrases which mean instant success for your website.
Click Here to Find Your Domain Now

Whether you choose a keyword rich domain or a domain based on your company name will depend on the history of your business, how you intend to market your website and where your potential visitors are coming from.

Company Name option

Naming your site after your domain will probably seem more than obvious to many of you, but you'll be surprised to know that not every website is named after the domain name and while sometimes the consequences can be disastrous, sometimes it can also be of benefit to a website.

If you are an established business, trading offline for many years with a strong brand and identity that has cost thousands to achieve, it makes sense that you will want to carry your identity over into the online world. But getting traffic from all over the web may not be as important to you as reaching customers in your local area.

If this is the case, it may make more sense to register your company name and create brand awareness locally instead of trying to capitalize on search engine presence, though the two are not exclusive as we will see later.

Let's say you have a company called E.H. Rutlgedge & Co and you help people eliminate debt, but you're based in California and can only provide your service to residents in this catchment area.

Since you are only servicing local clients, you may not care if someone in New York can find your site in Google since they are not likely to become one of your customers.

In this case, it's not as important to register a name filled with search optimized keywords. You may decide to just reserve the company name.

When people think of your domain name, it's usually with the purpose of typing the url into their browser to visit your site or to pass it along as a recommendation. If your company, product or service is called for example, ACE Accounting and you choose the domain name accounting4u.com, you are loosing out in several ways.

1. Potential clients will not know automatically where to go. For example, when people think of Wibolschool.com, they don't have to wonder what URL to type into their browser to get there. The name of the site is also the URL.
2. In an effort to find you, your potential visitors may stumble across your competitors, loosing you potential clients in the process.
3. By choosing a domain name that is different to your business/website name you are not cashing in on the opportunity to further strengthen your brand awareness and identity.

It is important to remember that visitors are not going to go out of their way to remember your domain name. With so much information and so many competitors on the Internet why make it difficult for them. The only people who will really try to remember your domain name are your competitors!

Keyword Optimised Domain Names

If being found in the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo is extremely important to you, you should register a name that contains your major keywords instead of your company name.

While other factors come into play with search engines, such as the content of your website and quality of your links from other sites, it certainly doesn't hurt to make sure your domain name is optimized for maximum results.

The average person searches the Internet by subject or theme, not by proper name. So while it may seem appropriate to use your business name as your domain name, if you're trying to reach the broader Internet market you'll want to choose a name that includes keywords that your target audience is likely use when they search for your services or products.

For example, you want to offer debt elimination services to a global market, choosing your company name as your domain name is not the best option. To help achieve higher placement in search engines , having popular keywords in your domain name can be beneficial. Instead of EHRutledgeandCo.com, you might choose debtelimation.com or debtmanagement.com.

Finding the most popular keywords for optimized domain names can be done easily using tools such wordtracker or the overture search tool.
Likewise, a name like Water-Features-For-Beginners.com would be much better than JimsGardenSplashes.com.

You can still list your company name on your web pages if you wish, but it is more important to make sure the domain name includes your important "search engine friendly" keywords if you want increase your chances of attracting global traffic.

For help finding the best keyword based domain for your business, use the domain suggestion tool.

1. Make it memorable

Not everyone will bookmark your page initially so try to think of something that can be easily remembered.

Some registrars allow you to register a name with up to 63 characters. Just because you can register up to 63 characters doesn't mean you should! You must keep in mind that people need to be able to remember it, and easily type it into their browser.
Longer domains leave more room for typing errors, which translates into lost customers.

Try to register the shortest name that your customers and visitors will associate with your Website. On the other hand you don't have to settle for an obscure domain name like aoas.com when what you mean is AceOnlineAccountingSolutions.com.

There is still some disagreement about whether a long or short domain name is better. Some argue that shorter domain names are easier to remember, easier to type and far less susceptible to mistakes: for example, "findit.com" is easier to remember and less prone to typing errors than "cometomywebsitesandobtainit.com".

Others argue that a longer domain name is usually easier on the human memory - for example, "gaepw.com" is a sequence of unrelated letters that is difficult to remember and type correctly, whereas if we expand it to its long form, "GetAnEconomicallyPricedWebsite.com", customers are more likely to remember the domain name.

Some of these arguments are actually academic. It's increasingly difficult to get short meaningful domain names. There are professional domainers who specialize in buying and selling of three and four letting domains. If you do manage to get a short domain name, the key is to make sure it's a meaningful combination of characters and not the obscure "gaepw.com" in our example above.

Long domain names vs short domain names :

Long domain names that have your site keywords in them have an advantage in that they tend to rank better in a number of search engines. Search engines give preference to keywords that are also found in your domain names. So, for example, if you have a site on free used car parts with a domain name like usedcarparts.com, chances are it will do better in a search for "used car parts" than say, Atomcars.com

2. Dot What?

There are many different extensions available right now. For businesses, a .com suffix is recommended. It is first extension that most people try when searching for a Website.

Sometimes, it isn't a bad idea to register several similar domain names. Protect your name by registering multiple extensions (.net, .org, etc.) If you have "yourname.com", register "yourname.net" so no one else takes it. You can register your full company name and a shorter, easier to remember version. Some people even register common misspellings of their company's name.

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.

One common question I encounter is from people who can't get the ".com" domain of their choice, but find the ".net", ".org" or other country-specific top level domains (TLDs) available (like .co.uk, .de .fr, etc). Should they go for these?

The answer is not as straightforward as you might think. If your business or services are specific to one community or locality, it makes sense to get a country-specific domain. Customers know they are dealing with a local entity.

Car buyers in Ireland are not likely to want to search for cars on cars.com. They identity more readily with cars.ie.

But what if your site or business can benefit from an international audience? There are actually many views on this. The following is a short summary.

a. A .net .org or other TLD domain name that is right for your business is better than an obscure .com domain name. From this point of view domain names like "myperfectdomain.de" or "myperfectdomain.net" are better than "myobscuredomain.com".

The risk with this argument is that if you get a country specific domain, people may think that your business only services that country.

b. Another school of thought things that ".net" and ".org" extensions are acceptable domain names. For some, the ".org" extension actually describes the non-profit nature of their organization. So, for example, the famous blogging giant Wordpress can be found at "wordpress.org".

c. Others settle for the ".com" extension and no less. As grounds for their arguments, they cite the browser algorithms used to locate a website when a user simply types a name like "acme" into the browser. Apparently, the browser searches for a domain name "acme.com" before attempting "acme.net", etc.

As such, people who do that will be delivered to your competitor's site if you do not also own the ".com" extension.

Indeed, even if people do not rely on their browser to complete their typing, many simply assume a ".com" extension when they type a domain name, so if your business is "Acme", they'll just assume your domain name is "acme.com" rather than "acme.net" or some other such name.

When you have settled on several available name choices, see what your friends and clients have to say. A name that may make perfect sense to you may be too hard for other people to remember. Is your domain easy to say? Is it hard to spell? Do you have to explain why you chose the name?

3. Register Your Domain NOW

Domain names are being snatched up by the thousands every day. You must register immediately unless you want to get stuck with "the-domain-name-that-no-one-wanted.net". You do not have to have a Webmaster or an ecommerce department or a Web design consultant or%u2026 you don't even need a Web page. Just get out there and register the domain you want before you loose it to potential competitors.

4. Character Types

Domain names can only use letters, numbers, and dashes. Spaces and symbols are not allowed. Also, domain names are not case sensitive.

If your name is more than 3 words long, it is recommended that you use hyphens (unless your name includes 3 short words). A name like carbuyersguide.com doesn't really need a hyphen because it's readable the way it is.

However a name like used-car-buying-scams.com looks better than usedcarbuyingscams.com since there are so many words in the name.
Should you get a hyphenated name? There are a few things to consider here:

Disadvantages of Hypenated Domain Names:

a. Many users are used to typing things like freewebdesigncourses.com but not free-web-design-courses.com. They'll probably leave out the hyphens and finish up at your competitor's site.

b. When people talk about your site or recommend it to their friends , having hyphens in your domain name leads to potential errors. Visitors will refer to your site as it is spoken, for example, SEObooksandvideos.com, even if the domain name is seo-books-and-videos.com

People hearing of the site or recommendation are likely to type "seobooksandvideos.com" into their browsers . Not good!

Advantages of Hypenated Domain Names

a. Search engines can distinguish your keywords better and thus return your site more prominently in search results for those keywords occurring in your domain name.

b. The non-hyphenated form may no longer be available. At least this way, you still get the domain name you want.

Generally, it is best to avoid hyphenated names if possible but acquiring the right domain name is often so tricky that and needs to be balanced against a lot of obstacles that sometimes it may be unavoidable.

There will be occasions when the domain name of your choice is not available and getting hold of it depends on how committed you are to the particular name. When this happens you have two options only

1. Compromise on the domain name. This may be difficult to consider, especially if you have an existing brand name that you're known for.

2. Try to buy the domain from it's current owner. You may have invested a lot of time and money into establishing your brand name and this may justify attempting to buy the domain from it's current owner. To do this you could you Whois to obtain information for the domain and contact the person listed or you could hire a domain negotiator to try to obtain the domain for you. One way or the other, you are likely to pay a lot

3. More for a domain acquiring it this way and there is a risk that the owner may not want to sell the domain at all.

On the other hand, if you're just starting out, you might prefer the cheaper alternative of trying to obtain a domain name first, and then naming your website (or business) after the domain that you've acquired.

So if you've acquired, say, the domain name "acme.com", then your website and business might be named "Acme" or "acme.com". I know this seems a bit like putting the cart before the horse, but that's the reality if you don't want to lose out on the Internet.