How to Make a Final Selection of Your Domain Name
June 24th, 2009
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So you want to start up a website? One of the best things you can help yourself with in your domain name choice is to develop a strategy and plan of attack. One of the best things you can do for your fledgling website is to bestow it with an appropriate, catchy, easy to remember domain name. Ultimately you are seeking to attract customers- the Holy Grail, and good marketing (which will help with Search Engine placement also) begins with your choice of domain name.
What if someone else already owns the domain name you wanted? But you really wanted it badly. Can the domain name still be acquired? Could be. It’s possible, but there are conditions. With some research and hard work you can possibly obtain the name from the current domain name owner. But for now, lets look at some alternatives to getting that domain name you want:
Hyphenated Names One strategy to consider if the domain name you want is already taken would be to hyphenate it, as in turning ricksantiqueshop.com into ricks-antique-shop.com. Is hyphenating the best way to go? Yes and no. If you are dealing with an already well known name, generally the answer would be no, as most web surfers would usually just enter the non-hyphenated version in, and end up at your competitors’ website instead. Not the desired result! Also, the longer the name you have chosen, the more tedious and error prone it becomes for the surfer to type in the name correctly, again foiling the chances that they will end up at your website. So, the shorter the better. Another school of thought: IF the web domain you want is already taken, IF the owner of the domain name won’t give it up, and IF the website associated with it is non-existent or poorly designed with low traffic, hyphenating the name might make sense after all.
Longer or Shorter? You can purchase domain names up to 67 characters in length. At 63 characters, thelongestdomainnameintheworldandthensome
andthensomemoreandmore.com claims to be the longest domain name in the world, and it may very well be. Can you envision anyone wanting to type it into their browser? My website is www.StartMyWebsiteToday.com and features a name that in a few words encapsulates the purpose of the site. Good name selection can be helpful also with search engine ranking. When choosing your domain name try to keep it short and concise, and if at all possible let the name tell the story of the site. Keep it as short as possible.
Brand Name or Generic The answer here is it depends. Definitely if your business is known by a fairly well known brand name, then you would want to try and secure that as your domain name. For instance, Nike.com is a well known brand name site, although there is nothing in the domain name to suggest that it is a site about shoes. Still, Nike is such a well known brand name to the public that people automatically know what they will be shopping for when they get there. If your brand name is well known, definitely try to obtain your brand name as a domain name. But if your company is Nike or Coca Cola or Budweiser don’t discount the idea of buying the domain name shoes.com or soda.com or beer.com if they are available as well. People often search the web using generic terms, more so even than brand names. A person is more likely to search the internet with generic terms like shoes or footwear or sneakers than to search by a single brand name, even one as big as Nike. Think it through and hedge your bets. You can have as many domain names as you want pointing to a single website, so the more generic terms you can acquire that directly describe your business, the better. A generic name if your business is new or not yet well known can get great results, if you can find a good one. To start your search for your own unique domain name, here is a link to a domain name search engine.
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