We will now help you choose a domain name by pointing out some important things to consider before going through the domain registration process. Your website domain name will represent your website in the online world and will act as a sort of personal or corporate business card highlighting your content. And since your domain name is the first thing a potential visitor gets to know about you, it is very important to pick it very wisely and avoid some easy mistakes.
Below we have listed some of the most important factors to consider before registering a new domain address.
1. Always try to go for a .COM Top Level Domain (TLD).
The most common and hence popular choice for the domain name extension is the "DOT COM" TLD. Because of this, it is safe for us to recommend you to register a domain name with this extension. Very often people who are looking for a particular international company or a website with a brand name even assume that it has a .com extension and hence sometimes land on wrong web pages. So you can already see an obvious advantage to a .com website.
However, if you are planning to start a network of websites or even an education website then you are better off with having a domain with an appropriate extension (in this example it would be .net and .edu respectively). Please note that only accredited institutions can register domain names with .edu, .gov, .mil TLD's through special organisations.
The 5 most common domain extensions:
.COM - Commercial domain
.NET - Network domain/website
.GOV - Government domain (e.g. the US government agency)
.ORG - Organization domain (nonprofit websites)
.EDU - Educational domain (e.g. university websites)
2. Make the domain related to site content.
In most cases it is a big advantage if the domain name reflects the website topic or the content which the visitor is most likely to find. So for example if your new website will be discussing Wordpress templates then a potentially good domain name is obviously something which has both words somehow combined to make a meaningful domain name (e.g. MyWordpressTemplates.com). People usually associate websites to their domain names so this is one good reason to register meaningful combinations. Likewise, it is easier to remember a site if it has a related web address. For example: If your website will be focused on selling laptops then make the domain name reflect your product and register something like ReliableLaptops.com.
However, as you will probably find, most of the really good names have long been registered and used by your competitors. In this case you have basically two options: 1 - Try and buy the domain off the current owner. 2 - Look for other possible keywords/keyword combinations. The second option is usually much easier to implement and hence we recommend you to be creative and think of alternative words for your domain.
3. Make it easy to remember and as short as possible.
Although these two points might sound very straightforward at first you can't imagine how many people make the error of creating long complex names for their sites.
Try to avoid numbers and hyphens, these will only make it harder for people to describe your website name verbally. Very often information gets spread around by word of mouth and it can get confusing to describe a domain which has a hyphen, number and complex word combinations in it. At this point you might find that abbreviations are the magical solution. However, this is also not exactly true. Long combinations of unmeaning letters could make it very easy to get your potential visitors confuses. For example, although this is a very popular website, how much can you tell from their domain name: wpdfd.com? Not much, eh? Also think about how would you pronounce this name to your friend...doubleyoupedeefvee.com? Sounds a bit clumsy doesn't it? This is why if your website is about webpage design then try to use the actual words in stead of a collection of W's & D's.
There is one advantage to use the "-". If your site will contain two or more words then separating them with a hyphen will make it easier for search engines like Google, Yahoo etc, to distinguish between the keywords and hence rank your site according to these. And likewise you have a higher chance of registering a domain name with your favorite words by separating them with - 's. Usually the good non hyphenated word combinations have long since been registered.
4. Brainstorm for keywords and think twice!
Create a list of the top keywords describing your website content. People will be more satisfied with your site content you you fulfill their expectations. No one wants to be tricked into visiting a page expecting it to be something else. So if you site is about fishing then call it something like Ilovetofish.com not computerhelp.com thinking you would get more visitors that way. Pretty obvious? Well there are loads of people out there faking domain names to trick you into visiting their site and thus generating revenue from vendor programs and such.
When brainstorming for keywords you can try to write down full phrases which describe you website content. This way you can then vary the words and get good combinations.
One other way of finding available domain names for keywords which have already been registered is to add prefixes and suffixes - "My", "The", "online", "live" etc. You will find that this can be very useful especially if you are desperate for a particular website name. Just make sure you dont violate any copyright issues by registering domains of officially registered trademarks.
5. So where do you check which domains are registered and which are still available?
To help you out, we have created a special domain name availability checking tool. It will automatically check the WHOIS database for registered websites names and tell you which ones are taken (i.e. who owns a domain name). It will also provide you with the information on who is the present owner of the website.
