Anyone wanting to do business over the Internet needs a website.  Websites need domain names.  If you use a free host, they will probably be able to give you their domain name with your ID inserted into it somehow, but this is not what you want to do.  Instead you want your own domain name that relates closely to the niche you’re in.

Domain Extensions

.com  is the best for e-commerce.  Try to get this extension for your primary website whenever possible.

.net would be second best, especially if you have several large, interconnected websites.

.org is for service and information oriented websites.  It may help in gaining the trust of your readers.

Country-specific extensions; like .ca for Canada, .jp for Japan, etc; are beneficial when your niche is relevant to that country.

Choosing a Domain Name

Getting the exact domain name you want is getting more difficult, since so many easy one and two word names are already taken.  Have several ideas ready when you go to check availability.  Sometimes you need to get creative.  Think of how you can add a word or make it more personal.  For example, if you’re selling mustard and your name is Bob, you might name your domain BobsMustard.com

The domain name should concisely represent what your website is all about.  If your domain is based around a single product, by far the best choice would be the name of that product.

If it is a product you yourself created and that domain name is already taken, you should consider changing the name of the product.  This is especially important if you look at the taken domain name’s website and find they are selling a similar product.  You don’t want to have your product confused with theirs, both for legal reasons and to alleviate confusion for your customers.

Other Naming Considerations

Keep it as short as you can.  Try for two or three words, four at the most.  Never have more than 20 characters total.

There are some very popular websites that are named with a made up word – eBay.com, Xanga.com, Bebo.com, etc, but these are not optimal names, especially for someone just starting out without a huge advertising budget.  Instead you want something easy to remember that falls easily in the niche you’ve chosen.

Misspelled words are also something to avoid.  Sites like flickr.com are the exceptions, but generally they just look bad.  You can use such a name as a redirect to your main site, however, especially if your real site name has common misspellings.

Avoid words like “best,” and “top.”  These superlatives actually hurt your credibility rather than enhancing it.  They can also cause problems if you ever decide to use PPC advertising, as Google and others don’t allow them.

Use an adjective as the first word.  For example, suppose you’re selling website templates.  You might choose the adjective “cool” to make it CoolTemplates.com.

Hyphens are a subject of some debate.  Many use them effectively in their domain names.  But, like the issue above where your exact product name is unavailable, it could cause confusion for your customers.  If they forget the hyphen they may end up at a competitor’s website instead of yours.  Also, some have suggested that search engines might ignore you if there’s a hyphen in your domain name, as many spammers use this type of domain.  I’m not sure if this is true, but better safe than sorry.  If you’re unsure, stay away from hyphens.

Avoid using numbers (digits).  If JohnsHosting.com isn’t available, JohnsHosting62.com isn’t a good alternative.  It just looks bad.  JohnsHosting4U is kind of cheesy.  Find a totally different name.

Never use abbreviations.  One exception is if it’s extremely well known.  For example if you have a website related to television or television programming, the “TV” abbreviation would be okay to include in your domain name, as people use that abbreviation for television even more often than they use the whole word.

Where to Register Your Domain

There are many reliable choices for domain registrars.  I’d recommend registering with someone other than your web host.  They tend to make it difficult to manage your own domain, tying you to them forever.  You don’t want that kind of restriction, so just use an outside registrar.

Here are the most popular, respected and reasonably-priced alternatives:

- Go Daddy
- Name Cheap

I gave much more information about registrars in this previous post.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 at 10:03 pm and is filed under Websites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.