Choosing a Domain Name

Second to your niche, choosing a domain name is one of the most important decisions you will make in building your blog. Essentially, a domain name is your address on the internet. Not only will a good domain name help the search engines find you more easily, it will draw more traffic too.

Basics

Anyone can register a domain name.

You can register a domain name up to 67 characters.

You can register a name for up to 10 years in advance.

Look for

Choose unique name

Choose a dot com extension. Most internet users assume domain names are a dot com.

If you have a business, try registering your actual business name.

After you register your business name, try to get one or more generic names that describe your business.

Use keywords that describe your business. Try not to use more than two or three keywords. Using more than three key words can damage the search engine results. The longer your name, the more likelihood customers will misspell it. Furthermore, your email address will be longer too.

To protect your domain name, you may want to register for .net and .org.
If the domain name you want is already registered, you might want to try buying it from the owner. Sometimes the owner may not have a website attached to it yet. You can find the name of the owner at www.allwhois.com.

Domain names are also sold on the secondary market. Check out www.GreatNames.com or www.Afternic.com.

Look for a short name that is easy to spell.

If you’re having problems coming up with a name, a thesaurus may help you think of words.

Avoid

Hyphens

Slashes

Numbers

Abbreviations

Names too long

Don’t use a sub domain. Sub domain names make you look less professional, cheap, and unwilling to invest anything in your business. Customers expect a business to have a top-level domain name. By using a sub domain, you can lose 50% of your customer base. Secondly, if your subdomain isn’t relative to the top domain level, your site will be harder for the search engines to find, categorize, and index. If your site isn’t indexed, no one will be able find it, and there will be no traffic. It will also be harder to build backlinks for your site which is critical in obtaining a higher search engine rank page.

Domain Name Availability
Before you try registering your domain, check to see if it is available. Typing the url in a search engine is not good enough. The name may be registered but not showing online. You can find out whether the name is available on any online web host server or domain registry site.

Conclusion
Since a domain name is so important, take your time choosing a name. . Not only does the domain name give you a home on the web, it helps internet users find your site, and draw traffic, it can also develop a brand for your business. Brands diffentiate your website from another website. Strive to develop a name that is unique, simple, keyword rich, and easy to remember. Your effort will pay off in the end.

A good name, like good will, is attained by many actions and may be lost by one. - Author Unknown

Definitions

Niche: A narrowly, focused topic

Domain: A group of computers on a web hosting site.

Domain name: A domain’s address on the internet or url.

Subdomain: A domain that is part of a larger domain.

Traffic: The number of visitors in a given amount of time.

Backlink: A one-way link pointing to your site from another site.

Search engine rank page (SERP): The page you come up on in search engine results.

Brand: A name, sign, or symbol that a consumer associates his overall perception of a product or service.