Choosing a domain name may be one of the most important parts of website online development. Your domain name is your identity on the web, which is included in your web hosting package. There’s a good chance that you’ve already picked a domain name for your website before picking a web host. But is your domain name suitable for your website? Will your visitor be impressed by your domain name? In a word, will your domain name bring you benefit?
Here are some tips on how to pick a great domain name:
1. Memorable
This is the first keyword of a great domain name.
With the bookmark feature of web browsers, Internet users now don’t have to note down the domain names of their favorite websites. But a memorable domain name can impress the visitors a lot and make your website more easily found by others.
The features of memorable domain names:
*Short enough
*Easily understood
Car.com is such a memorable domain name, not only short (three letters, and there are certainly domain names shorter than “car”.) but also easily understood. As you can see, the content of the website is mainly about cars. If you are interested in cars and find car.com helpful, the next time you are looking for information on cars, you can simply type www.car.com in the address bar of your browser. This is the magic of a memorable domain name. While as a matter of fact, nearly all short domain names have already been squatted or registered.
Fortunately, an easily understood domain name will also impress your visitors. Here “easily understood” means a visitor can judge the appropriate content of a website from its domain name without first accessing the website. For example, Hostease.com would be the domain name of a hosting provider who wants to ease users’ hosting, and wordpress.org would publish information on a blogging system called WordPress.
When you are picking a domain name, have “memorable” in mind.
2. consistent with your content
Perhaps you’ve got a short domain name or an interesting one, but this domain name is independent of your content, sorry, this is not a great domain name. Such domain name can be embarrassed. Imagine the scene you enter car.com in address bar with the result of information on clothes on the web page, you will probably leave with disappointment. So while picking a domain name, try your best to integrate it with your niche.
3. be cautious about top-level domains (TLD)
A perfect domain name is very important, while a suitable top-level domain also affects a lot.
According to a report of VeriSign, by the end of May, 2009, “.com” is still the most popular TLD. And .com, .cn, .de, .net, .org, .uk, .info, .nl, .eu, .biz are respectively top 10 TLDs in terms of size.
Which one will you choose as your top-level domain?
4. Purchase domain name through top-lever domain registry or well-known domain name resellers
In consideration of the stability of your website, please purchase domain name through top-level domain registry.
5. If the domain name you want has already been registered by someone else….
If the domain name you like has already been registered by others, check on which day will the domain name expire, then go to a domain registry or a web host and wait for the name to expire, and grab it as quickly as possible.
Alternatively, consider another domain name.
Hurry up, check for availability now and get a domain name of your own.