by Stephanie Ly

Created on: April 16, 2010

We all know how important it is to choose the right name for our business and its success. The online world though is a little different. If you launched your website tomorrow, no one would know about it unless you have already done a bit of premarketing. You see with an offline business, there is bound to be someone walking past your office or your shop who find interest in your products and services. On the online world people have no access to your website unless they know your domain name. So having the right domain name is crucial for your online business. Here are some tips on how to pick a good domain name.

<b>What you should do</b>

Rule number one – be relevant. Relevancy is the most important aspect when trying to decide on a domain name as this is what links your business to your domain. Try to think of relevant names that are also catchy and easy to remember. This can be a difficult job mainly because as most of the common domain names have already been taken. Tips you can consider are to choose:

-          Names related to the product of your business

-          Names related to the creator of the product of your business

-          Names related to the broad category of your product

-          Names related to the audience your are marketing

Rule number two – use keywords. Keywords are the words or phrases people type into the search engine box when searching for something on the Internet. If your domain name contains keywords relevant to your product, more people can find your website.

Rule number three – have some backup names. In most case your preferred domain name is probably taken. If it is a popular niche hundreds of other people around the world would also be trying to get the same domain name. It is best to have a few potential domain names ready. Sometimes you can add two of your keywords together or you can choose to add your own name into it so it’s easy to remember and would be more unique and branded.

Another way to avoid choosing domain that is taken then you can add the words “the” or “my” at the start or “site” or “shop” at the end.

<b>What you should not do</b>

Rule number one – Avoid hyphenating names – eg my-childrens-toy-shop.com is a lot harder to remember. In a verbal context people would not generally spell out the hyphen when talking to friends about the website.

Rule number two – Avoid long domain names. Short domain names are of greater advantage, the longer the domain name or the more words are incorporated in it then the more confusing and difficult it would be to remember and spell correctly.

Rule number three – Choose an alternative to .com such as .net or .us. Try purchasing .com domains. This is the most popular form of domain name and is the default setting in most people’s head. Other forms of domain names are a lot less popular. Also when people talk about website they can often forget to emphasise if it is dotcom or dotnet or something else.

Your domain name is your website’s identity on the Internet. Use these tips to think of a great domain name to prevent disappointment later.

Learn more about this author, Stephanie Ly.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.