Your domain name is
the representative of your business on the web, therefore you should
choose carefully. Ideally it should:
Be descriptive of your business.
Be as short as possible.
Be easy to remember.
Have a .com TLD. (Top Level Domain--the letters
following the final dot in the URL)
Contain at least one keyword that could be used to
search for your site.
You will probably find that all of the domain names you
first think of using are already registered. For example, if you were
selling books on the internet the domain name greatbooks.com would fulfill
all the criteria above, but it is already taken. Long ago many people
recognized that domain names would become valuable, so they registered as
many of the domain names that they could think of that were most desirable.
Many of these are not even being used for web sites, but are often offered
for sale at incredibly high prices. It so happens that the domain name
greatbooks.com is presently available (at the time of this writing) at
http://www.snapnames.com for $60.
If you come up with the ideal domain name for your business and find it is
already registered, check out the possibility of purchasing it. You
may be surprised to find it available at a reasonable price.
If all the simplest and most general domain names that
describe your business are taken, try adding extra words which more
specifically describe your business or products. While it is true that
lengthening a domain name usually makes it harder to remember, by adding
keywords you can make your site more search engine friendly. Search
engines give higher indexation to web sites that have the search term in the
URL.
If an acceptable domain name can be found with the .com TLD
you should use it. About nine times out of ten if you verbally tell
someone the domain name of your web site, they will remember it with a .com
ending even if it is not. Herein is the advantage of the .com TLD.
People who appraise the value of domain names place a higher value on the
.com names for this reason. For most business web sites the .net TLD
is probably the next most valuable, though .info may be more appropriate for
sites that are primarily informational in nature. The .org TLD is best
left for organizations.
It is a good idea to purchase purchase variations of your
chosen domain name such as plurals, hyphenated alternatives, and word
transpositions. If your web site brings in a lot of traffic, someone
may "ride your tail"--register a similar name to benefit from your site
popularity. Spending another $30 or so per year to prevent that may be
a very prudent investment.
When you finally settle on a domain name, look critically
at it to make sure others will not be seeing something different in it than
you did when choosing it. Sometimes putting perfectly good words
together in a domain name can result in unfortunate combinations of letters
that spell vulgar or offensive words you would not want associated with your
business.
Finally, steer clear of variations on trademark
names such as Google, IBM, Microsoft, etc. Riding their tail may get
your site banned from the search engines as well as a law suit.
A site with comprehensive information about domain names is
http://igoldrush.com.
