Choosing Domains Names

We all go through the painful period of searching and racking our “information overloaded” brains with the perfect Domain Name to Register. It happens, and will continue to do so as long as we keep registering domain names. Every-time we think we have found just the right domain name and there is no way someone else will have thought of it; our bubble bursts as someone has not only thought of  that name but even the closest of variations to that domain.

So we go back to the drawing board, scratching our head, looking up dictionaries, searching the net, handwriting on little bits of scrap paper; at work, at home, perhaps whilst we are driving and I am sure in many cases in the middle of the night as we awake and come up with the ideal name, or so we thought. Hey if you get up in the middle of the night and have come up with a new idea or name or whatever it is you are working on, don’t be lazy, get up and write it down. Believe me, there have been million dollar ideas that have vanished from the brain vault the next morning due to laziness or sleepiness.

Anyway back to the domain name chase. We have to accept the fact that the most sought after domain extension is the .COM, and since this has been around the longest, most popular and the most common; names under this extension is the hardest to find. There are professionals and businesses that register domain names as a source of income. They sell these names on a daily basis, so they have registered all the common name already, especially for the .com extension. The other extensions and even the country TLD’s are being snapped up at a rapid pace.

Check NOW at Domains And Hosting if your Domain Name is available.

So what are your alternatives? You have a choice of being smart with names or using a combination of names that fit your purpose. So here are some rules to follow when deciding on domain names;

• Based on your business, product or service; write down all the various names and name combination’s you can come up that you like and fit your website. For instance if you were to start a website about old cars; then of course one of the ideal domain is oldcars.com (which of course is not be available), so then you may want to write down different derivatives of your subject such as; old automobiles, classical cars, old cars, history of cars,  etc. You get the idea. Using old and cars as part of your domain also helps with SEO of your site.
• If your business or product is already well known or you wish to brand your name, then you can use a unique domain name. Branding takes time if it is new, since there is no real word association to the product, service or business you are promoting. Let’s say I come up with mytiyak.com as a domain for my business that sells shoes. So mytiak is the brand I am selling and trying to promote, it will certainly take time and effort for visitor to associate shoes with mytiak. The advantage here is that once established it could do wonders for my product, but it will take time. The big corporations can afford to do this as they also have the money to promote and brand a new product.
• Which DOT do we select? You must start with the most common and widely used; the .COM. All of us use this domain extension and will almost always search for .COM first when looking up a site. Once you have registered .COM. I suggest you at least select the .NET, .ORG and your country TLD (Top Level Domain). So if you were to leave in the UK, I would recommend you select .CO.UK as well. If you wish to register other TLD’s such as .ORG, .BIZ etc. by all means go ahead, but at least those four are essential to register if you are serious about your business. I think the .COM is critical to obtain.
• If your business caters only to a local community and you serve only your city or town or country then you may choose to register only your ccTLD (Country Code) - If the .COM is unavailable and you are adamant about the choice of Domain Name. A country code domain extension also assures the searcher that you are a local company. As a matter of fact search engines such as Google have a built in algorithm (and settings) where they will refer or show you results of your search to businesses that are close to your location (unless you change your search settings) first. When you think about it that actually makes sense doesn’t it. In searching for a Pizza Place why would it display a place from Sydney, Australia.
• You also have the option of hyphenating your domain name such as; i-like-old-cars.com. But imagine having to try and say that to someone over the phone or even trying to remember it. Search engines have no problem in separating the words so there is no issue with the SEO of your site, in fact it may even be helpful.
• Many companies also register the plurals or misspellings of their domains. For instance words like “believe” can also be spelled as “beleive”, or say “oldcars.com” should also register “oldcar.com”. So a lot depends on your domain name and the various other obvious derivatives that you may want to register or not. Some of this gets a bit expensive and paranoia can set in very easily.
• This is so obvious; come up with short domain names. Yep, a lot easier said then done, since all the short ones are taken.
• Come up with names that are very easy to remember and say over the phone or in person.
• Choose domain names that are easy to spell, pronounce and write.
• After the .COM you must register at least your country code TLD. I think this is so important that I am mentioning it again with the importance on the country. If you are going to register a domain the minimum is the .COM AND the Country Code. So in Canada it would be .CA
• Check availability of domain at www.foxtrotdomains.com. It will also show you various other derivations of your domain name in case the one you chose is already registered. So in the above example if the domain ‘mytiak.com’ was already registered then it would display other names like ‘mytiakstore.com’, ‘mytiakshop.com’ etc
• Is it important to have your product, service or website content as part of your domain name? It helps for sure but it is not the determining factor for the ranking of your site.

I suggest take your time, search the net for sites that are similar to yours, see where they rank in a search, observe their domain names and figure out what works for you. Remember you may have the greatest domain name registered but if your site lacks in content it will all be for naught and the reverse is also true.