Choosing the Right Domain Name

If you’re about to start a website or blog to do your home business, it’s best to register your domain name immediately ASAP! You’re not the only one in this world thinking of getting a catchy name for your online business. A split second can determine your fate!

But before that, take account into these three when choosing domain names you’re going to use:

• your product

Get a domain name similar or at least related to the products you offer. If you specialize in program reviews, you might add “honestreviews.com” as a candidate or “futuretech.com” if you’re focusing on recent tech updates on your website.

 

• your target market

Domain names can be also mixed up from those of your target audience. “culinarynewbies.com” can be a memorable brand for people who want to know how to increase their cooking skills. Of course this will tighten your market, but your site will reach your target more directly thus saving promotional costs and action. If you’re asking how’s that possible, just trust me for now .

• why should people come to you?

Give a reason why they should come to you. What makes your site unique? How you can make other’s life easier? How do you provide solution for their problems? From the example above, “honestreviews.com” can be a good suggestion for people who look for objective reviews and got tired of being scammed. Only make sure to be really honest in your reviews! Don’t mention anything you can’t afford to do.

Dashed domain names like “honest-reviews.com” took more effort to type than “honestreviews.com” and people remember words without hypens between them.

You don’t have to combine all those factors above, the more important thing is your domain name should always stick well in people’s minds. Long domain names full of keywords don’t fit well in our brains. For long term business, number one is a memorable brand then comes keyword rich names.

Have them all ended by “.com”. It’s the default setting in most people’s heads. So when they only remember your domain name and you happen to have the .net version, people will led themselves to the .com version which means you’re giving out your traffic to competitors for nothing.

Once you make up your mind, look for its availability. You can buy domain names anywhere, but I purchase mine through GoDaddy, it’s an ICANNaccredited registrar. Don’t get dissapointed if they’re not available, most of the time they don’t and good stuffs tend to be sold out quick. You can try adding words like “my”, “e”, or “safeculinary.com” for the example above, as long as remember to make it as brief as possible.

If that doesn’t work and all your best ideas are taken, don’t lose your spirit! Brand your own name! Create a keyword of your own! You might not get the keyword rich name, but you can still create a memorable name. “LucysKitchen.com” for the culinary site or “BenSaysSo.com” for your honest review website will caught up well in people’s minds. Look at the famous memorable websites! They created their own brand like PayPal, eBay, Expedia, Yahoo!, Google… So why not become one like them?

For a summary, here’s the priority guideline to a better start:

1. determine your brief, memorable domain name
2. see if the .com version is available. If it is, registration is next. You can do it here.
3. IF it isn’t, look for another domain name, repeat from step 1 and add words like “my”, “e”, etc while keeping it memorable.
4. if you run out of ideas, take alternative TLDs available either .info, .net or .biz.

This one is optional, but if you have extra funds, you better register your domain for a longer term, not just 1-2 years. Some search engines give extra trust credit for domain names that are long term registered. What’s the reason they do so? Well, many spam sites are only registered for a year or two. If you’re planning on having a long term reputation with your site, registering your name for a couple of years is an initial step differs you from spam sites. Again, you don’t have to do this, it’s not a critical thing. Adjust your budget well.

Another option is you can buy multiple versions of your domain names, even if you won’t be using them all. You can prevent competitors from getting the similar name as yours and reducing competition. It’s not imperative though. If your budget is limited, you can use them for other purposes.

If you ended up using other than .com domains, you can still thrive your way to success. An easy to remember domain name means nothing if there’s nothing to remember about the name.