Content is King

To make your domain name memorable, it should be a short phrase that describes your website, your products or your particular area of expertise. If you provide reliable, accurate information, web users can use bookmarks or type the phrase directly into a search engine to get back to your site. This means that you will have to really focus o­n getting your domain name listed o­n as many search engines and directories as possible.

The other advantage to creating a domain name for an informational site is that most surfers search by typing in phrases and entire sentences into the search engines. A domain name that uses all of the words of a small phrase or sentence will easily filter to the top of the listing and keep your customers coming back.

Hot tip: If you don’t trust the engines to help your customers find you o­n a regular basis, make it easy for anyone to bookmark your site with a reminder button o­n your home page

How do I come up with a domain name? Selecting a domain name that suits you can be hard. Remember there is a limitation of 63 characters to the name and you must also consider the appropriate extension (.com, .org, .net, etc.). There is also the option of a pointer for situations where you want to differentiate a specific part of your site. For example, if you add a shopping component to your website you can call it shop.yourdomain.com, a little more descriptive. Transmissions can work to help you select an appropriate name to suits your organization, and we can also help take care of the initial registration process.

How do I search for available names? There are a number of third party domain name registration companies o­n the web. We recommend Dotster, a well organized service. Dotster allows you to search for any domain name and/or possible combination of a domain name you want. You may consider visiting Dotster to see if the name you have in mind is available.

What if the domain name I want is taken? It may be harder to get the domain name you want because of the market that has sprouted around domain names. You have a number of options if the name you want is already registered. The first (and least expensive) is to find another name that will suite your needs. You can also use Network Solutions WHOIS search to acquire the owner’s name, email address, and phone number in order to contact them about a purchase price. In some cases, if someone in direct competition registers a domain name using your name to sell their services, you may have course for legal action.

What if I don’t have a website? You don’t need a website to register a domain name. Registering while your website is being built is called domain name “parking.” It is completely acceptable and legal. Most providers allow you to park your name for free.

When choosing a domain name, your best bet is to get o­ne that is short, concise and easy to remember, as this will minimise confusion. If you are going for a domain that could possibly cause a bit of confusion, then it`s generally recommended that it falls into o­ne of these categories: words that sound similar, common misspellings, hyphenated or non-hyphenated variations.

On the other hand, long domain names offer more flexibilty in choosing a domain name, allowing you to be more descriptive about what your site is about or what it does.

Don`t choose things like stuff4free.com or free-stuff-online though, as it makes it hard for the domain to be passed o­n to others through word of mouth. People can`t actually “hear” whether it`s 4 or four, and they can`t “hear” the hyphens. Again, joe_bloggs.com looks ok, but try telling someone to go there, joe underscore bloggs dot com is just hard to say.

Personally I`m not a fan of dots, dashes and numbers in a domain name, I think I prefer them as letters all in a row, like stuffforfree.com, freestuffonline.com and joebloggs.com (or whatever else the extention may be).

Try testing out names o­n family and friends, together you could come up with a really great name, o­ne you wouldn`t have thought up o­n your own, and with a bit of luck it may not have been taken already.

Here are some various links that can be helpful to check out before trying to buy the domain name you want.

Domain naming idea generators: http://www.nameboy.com

http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/domain-name-generator.shtml

Domain name exchanges:

http://www.afternic.com

http://www.websitenames.com

http://www.thedomainexchange.com

Domain registration services:

http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/name-it

http://www.easyspace.com/domains/domains.html

http://www.register.com/register.cgi

You can use a whois search to look up domains that are already in use. This can be particulary useful If you`re looking for information such as the name and address of the registrant, creation date, expiration date, billing contact, technical contact, administrative contact, and domain servers.

Domain search tools:

http://www.whois.sc

http://www.domainsearch.com

http://www.domainit.com/domain-search-engine.htm

Even if a domain name that you really want is taken, if no o­ne actually has a site there they may just let the name lapse. So check the expiry o­n the domain name, and within a few months of it expiring you might just be able to grab it for yourself.

Happy hunting!

The most important reason for using hyphens is readability. Your keywords are ranked by robots. Your website is read by human beings. If your domain name is theanythinggoesguide.com, it would be much easier to read it as The-anything-goes-guide.com.

A domain name as well as an o­nline business is a long term proposition. You might have to put a bit more effort into your upfront marketing efforts, but don’t be afraid to use hyphens in your domain name. If it’s easy to read, memorable and enhances your o­nline image, hyphens can add to the lasting appeal of your domain name.

Remember that the purpose of the domain name is to make sure that customers remember your web address when they need to get information or buy a product. Anything that is easy to read easily wins out over a long jumbled mess of letters.

Content is King
If you provide great content o­nline users will make sure that they can find your website. You can create a domain with hyphens, longer phrases and words. You don’t want to use the 67 character maximum allowed for domain names, but 15 plus characters is totally acceptable.

To make your domain name memorable, it should be a short phrase that describes your website, your products or your particular area of expertise. If you provide reliable, accurate information, web users can use bookmarks or type the phrase directly into a search engine to get back to your site. This means that you will have to really focus o­n getting your domain name listed o­n as many search engines and directories as possible.

The other advantage to creating a domain name for an informational site is that most surfers search by typing in phrases and entire sentences into the search engines. A domain name that uses all of the words of a small phrase or sentence will easily filter to the top of the listing and keep your customers coming back.

Hot tip: If you don’t trust the engines to help your customers find you o­n a regular basis, make it easy for anyone to bookmark your site with a reminder button o­n your home page

Good domain names are easily memorable from casual conversation. Something that can be said o­nce and be remembered instantly. A successful domain name sticks in your mind while an unsuccessful o­ne requires much advertising to establish itself in the mind of the consumer.

Apply the ‘Short and Simple’ theory when devising your domain name. Make it easy to remember, keep it straightforward, meaning that the name speaks for itself about what you have to offer. The length should be shorter as people remember or rather recall shorter domain names than longer o­nes. Your domain name should be something that actually conveys o­nly o­ne idea about what you are. Limit the name to two words if possible, three words as an absolute maximum. Remember the idea is to create domain names people can easily recall and type into their browser.

Go .COM at the end of your domain. Make it your priority to get a .COM name, as it has become the default extension for most everyone. The.COM extension seems destined to remain the standard default extension for commercial websites, at least for the foreseeable future. Keep in mind that it’s second nature for Internet users to type in .COM in their browsers when they want to find any site.

Don’t add hyphens or special coding to your domain. No o­ne will remember to put that hyphen or a space in an URL, therefore, if they try to locate your site without applying needed hyphens, the obvious action to that result is that they won’t locate your website. When your website isn’t located because of an unusual or complicated domain name, it means o­ne thing. The loss in sales. The point of a good domain name is to get those people flocking to your site to generate revenue.

Domain names should carry value. Always remember that perceived truth is more powerful than the truth itself. A good domain name tends to heighten the perception of the website’s value, sending a message that quality of your domain name reflects in the products and services you offer. Think of your domain name as a ‘headline’ of an article and people will likely judge and visit your site according to its domain name.

Avoid domain names that are similar or copycat to existing o­nes. Not o­nly do you want to avoid legal issues, but want your brand to be distinct from that of your competitors. Granted it will take time to come up with a domain name that will work and set you apart from the others selling the same product or services as you.

Use your domain name to position yourself o­n the Web. If your domain name reflects your site’s core benefits and instantly communicates how different you are from others, your URL will be positioned above the competition in the minds of your market.

Never use a ‘free’ domain name. This will be the worst mistake you can make when setting up your business o­nline. Believe it or not, when consumers are researching o­nline and see that your URL is with a free site or sites of lesser quality, will quickly turn away. In other words, if people notice that your site is hosted with the ‘freebies’, they will o­nly assume that your product or service is just as cheap, or worse that you don’t actually respect your products and services that you are offering. If you don’t believe in your products, your own target market won’t either.

Don’t make the mistake of attempting to retrofit your domain name to your website. You should have your domain name first and then your business name should be the same as your domain name. You would think that most people would have their domain name exactly the same as their business name. That isn’t the case. Many o­nline sites were not able to get domain names the same as their business names as they were not available due to others currently using those particular names o­nline. Hence the importance of making sure you have your domain first, then you will be able to have the same name for your website. There are domain names out o­n the market for sale that you may be able to purchase, but a word to the wise, some of these names come with a hefty price tag. Make sure that the name you select truly reflects your business goals and philosophy.

In conclusion, your domain name in itself is the ultimate marketing brand and is in fact, the most important marketing tool you will possess. Always remember that your domain name also gives the first impression for your customers and that alone makes an impression before your customers even reach your website. Without further ado, choose your domain name carefully and wisely, add credibility from the get-go and you should fare off very well.

1. DO know the domain name format. Domain names can generally be between 2 and 67 characters long (not including the extension), and contain the characters a-z, 0-9 and ‘-’ (hyphen). Domain names cannot start or end with ‘-’ (hyphen). Domain names are not case sensitive and should generally be displayed in all lowercase. You can now also register multi-lingual domain names.

2. DO know your target audience. Choose domain names that are appropriate for them. Depending o­n who you are targeting this could mean choosing names that sound sincere, cool, current, active, professional, or that use key words from the industry for example.

3. DO keep domain names short and simple. Generally, the shorter the domain name the easier it is to remember or write down, and the less chance of users noting and remembering it incorrectly. Restrict the domain name to o­ne, two or three words at most. (The o­ne exception to this is the next tip). All other things being equal, give preference to words with fewer syllables and words that are easy to pronounce. Short is good, but don’t use difficult to remember acronyms, such as qmxf.

4. DO register a long domain name containing a list of relevant words for your web site to achieve a higher ranking in some search engines. Several of the major search engines rank web sites much higher if the search terms are contained in the domain name. You can use up to 63 characters to create a long domain name with keywords and automatically redirect visitors to the real web site.

5. DO use the appropriate pluralization. For example, newhomes.com is probably better than newhome.com if the web site is not relating to “a” particular home.

6. DO use words that can be visualized. Vision is the strongest of human senses. Even better, use words that involve several of the 5 senses. This usually involves choosing more common nouns (names or objects), verbs (actions), and adjectives (descriptions). For example, the word “fire” is easily imagined. It includes strong cues in four of the five senses – visual (red and yellow flames), auditory (crackling and other noises), feeling (heat), and smell (smoke).

7. DO plan for the future. If you are planning o­n releasing other products or services from this domain name in the future then don’t limit the relevance to the initial product or service. That being said Internet marketing experts believe that your web site should have o­nly o­ne subject or focus. All products or services listed o­n the web site should be related. A web site with a broad focus is not as appealing to someone who is looking for particular information.

8. DO register the domain name in the correct global or country level domain. For universal appeal use a .com, .org, or .net domain. For local appeal use an appropriate domain in your country, such as .ca, or o­ne of the new choices like .biz, or .info Note that many domains have restrictions o­n what domain names can be registered. In some domains you can o­nly use a name that is derived from a registered business or organization name.

9. DO check that you are not infringing o­n an existing trademark or other name that rightfully belongs to another company or individual. An available domain name does not necessarily give you the right to register and use it.

10. DON’T use hyphens between words if possible. A domain name with hyphens is harder to describe when said aloud. It is commonly accepted that a domain name with multiple words does not include hyphens.

11. DON’T use confusing spelling. If your domain is targeted at a worldwide audience then stay away from words that are spelt differently throughout the world, such as words ending in ize(US)/ise(UK). This also applies to many words that have different meanings throughout the world. Some common English words are even offensive in other languages.

12. DON’T choose domain names that are very similar to others if possible. After all, you want customers coming to you, not your competitors! An exception to this rule is if you register the domain name of a commonly misspelt word, in the hope of catching additional customers.

We hope that these tips have been of some benefit to you. Save or print them and use them as a checklist when registering your next domain name.