How to choose a successful domain name.
More than 50 million domain names have been registered worldwide and thousands new ones are added per day. It might be hard for you then to get the name that you really like for your website. Do not get discouraged from that fact, but rather try to be creative.
Remember that you can use a combination of almost all characters (letters, numbers, hyphens) for your domain. The length of a domain name can vary, but generally speaking it should be a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 67 characters.
Here are some tips how to choose a successful domain name:
International or Region-Specific Sites and Domain Issues
Country Code Top Level Domain Names (ccTLD) For example .com.au is widely used here in Australia.
Suggested Best Practices:
A good first question to ask is “Who exactly are we targeting? If you are targeting a specific country, targeting a specific language-speaking audience, or your web site copy is specifically for a country or language-specific audience, use a ccTLD (country code top level domain) that relates to your target country rather than a general .com domain.
For example, a ccTLD would look like www.domain.fr, www.domain.ca, www.domain.jp, or www.domain.co.uk. Always use ccTLDs for each language of your site.
Benefits Of Best Practices:
A ccTLD communicates to search engines the focus of your site.
A ccTLD is the quickest and most accurate way to communicate regionality to the search engines.
A ccTLD assigns more weight for local search. It allows your site to be more easily included in Google Australia, Google UK, etc.
Search engines tend to have higher confidence and often give a ranking boost to a ccTLD site for local searches. For example, Google France may give a more favorable ranking to a France-specific (.fr) site.
A listing of all ccTLD’s can be found at http://www.iana.org/root-whois/index.html
Once you have decided on a TLD, you need to consider a relavant name.
This does not have to be the exact name of your company, but when registering your preferred domain name in Australia you must be able to prove that the name you are choosing is relavant to your business.
Start brainstorming for relevant to your domain words.
- List as many words as you can think of related to your preferred domain name.
- List as many words as you can think of that are related to the content of your website.
Make different combinations with the listed words that are:- short,
- memorable,
- not easily confused,
- hard to misspell,
- relate to the core of the business,
- sound solid to the core of your business.
- Shorter domain names are easier to remember and type, and far less susceptible to mistakes: for example lottary.com is easier to remember, type than playthenationallottaryonline.com
But sometimes there is an exeption to this rule. A longer domain can be easier to remember by human memory than the shorter one - for example tbrea.com is a sequence of unrelated letters that is difficult to remember and type correctly, whereas, if we expand it to its long form 'TheBestRealEstateAgency.com' we are more likely to remember the domain name.
Pick a few of these combinations that you most like for the name of your domain.
If you like a specific word to be included in the domain name, think of all its forms: noun, verb, adverb, adjective. Consider also hyphens and numbers: sometimes you are a hyphen away from the dreamed domain name.
Start searching for the availability of these domains.
If you do business online, register your domain with as many of the extensions as available.
- Point them all to your site
- Let your name drive more traffic to your site
If your preferred choice is not available, do not get discouraged and try the next combination.
Hyphenated domains
Should you get a hyphenated name? There are a few things to consider here.
Disadvantages:It's easy to forget the hyphens when typing a name. Many users are used to typing things like worldwildlifefund.com but not world-wild-life-fund.com.They'll probably leave out the hyphens and wind up at your competitor's site
When people recommend your site to their friends verbally, having hyphens in your domain name leads to more potential errors than when the name does not contain hyphens. For example, how do you think your visitors will refer to your site if it is named free-online-games.com. They might say, "I visited Free Online Games dot com yesterday. It was fabulous." Their friends, remembering that comment later, might type into their browsers freeonlinegames.com.
Advantages: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.
The non-hyphenated form may no longer be available. At least this way, you still get the domain name you want.
Helpful tips when choosing your domain name:
Try to register a domain which contains a popular keyword applicable for your industry. This will help your customers remember your domain name better.
Don't register a domain containing the digit "0" in it, unless it is going to be part of a recognizable word (like 1000 or 2000). This is because the digit "0" is often confused with the vowel "O".
Try to avoid using domains that contain "2" for "to", "4" for "four", "u" for "you". Your customers will easily get confused. However, if you must register such a domain, register the expanded form of the domain as well, i.e. if you are registering only4you.com also you can register onlyforyou.com.