How to choose a good Domain name for your website
First step for setting up a new website or a blog is choosing a good domain name.
Picking up a good domain name is very important as most likely it will be stuck with the site for the rest of its existence. The reason I mentioned the name will be stuck with the site because once your site is established and you are generating traffics, if you decide to change the domain name you will have to start it all over again (all the hard work). The consequence is if you change your domain name you will start with ‘0’ page rank with Google and all the ranking of the previous domain name will drop and you will have to work your way up again to regain the rankings and the traffic. It’s like re-doing everything all over again.
That’s why when you get a domain name make sure it’s the right one for your site.
There are no Golden rules to pick up a good domain name but if you consider the following guidelines you should be able to pick up a good domain name for your site.
- Use of Keywords: Try using key words for the domain name that describes your site. Domain name is reflection of the site. It gives users an idea about the website. A good domain name always describes the nature of the site. For an example if you are planning to setup a website for book reviews it is more preferable to get a domain name like www.bookreviews.com rather than www.myhobby.com .
- Simplicity: Domain name should be easy to remember. When a visitor revisits your sites they might want to type the domain name but if they can not remember the domain name then you will loose some potential traffic.
- Short and Catchy: If the domain name is short it is easy to remember for the visitors. Big companies spends millions of dollars in research to find a domain name that stays in peoples mind like Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. In fact having a long domain name could get confusing and mistyped when visitor will try to find your site.
- Use of Hyphens: Hyphens (-) come pretty handy when naming the domain. For an example you wanted to get the domain name www.wordpresshandyhints.com but the domain name has been already taken so as a second choice you can try to use www.wordpress-handyhints.com.
- Extensions of Domain names: You might have noticed there are websites with different extensions on the web like .com, .net, .org and so on. I won’t go in depth explaining all the extension here. Different extensions stand for different purpose. Like most of the non profit organizations and charities use .org. I would always recommend you to get .com because when people think of website .com always comes in mind first. But if .com is not available you can always choose from the rest.
Few other Facts to consider:
Legal Issues: It is always good to do a bit of research before finalizing a domain name. Make sure that your domain name is not similar to any existing similar Business or Business name. Its better to play safe at the beginning rather than spending so much time setting up your website and find out that there are similar existing websites and they want to sue you. Prevention is always better than cure.
Stay in control: When you register a domain name make sure the registrar company is in ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).
Don’t use anyone else’s name to register your domain name because they can always decide to charge you more later which is kind of a blackmail and you got no control. Some web host might suggest you to put them as the technical contact, if you do so then when you would like to move to a different host, you will have to wait for your old web host to approve that. So put yourself for any technical contact.
Sometimes it is hard to get the domain name that you want. Always make couple of backup domain names ready so if the domain name has already been taken by someone which you wanted you can choose the next one from your backup list.
Video clip on Domain Rrgistration !!!
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9 Responsesto “How to choose a good Domain name for your website”
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Thanks for the information on web hosting, I have been trying to learn alot about it lately so that i can get my site hosted as well. Do you think a site about graphic design would be a good one?
I enjoyed your poston this and you wouldn’t believe how much I had to search Yahoo to get good information like this! I am studying at uni on this and didn’t quite understand a few things that are in metext books (god I hate those) and thankfully your information was straight to the point. Just how I like it!!
I will surely be checking out your blog out again in the future!!
I am glad you liked the post
If you are into Graphics design, I bet it will be a good one
i always buy domain names at Godaddy or Moniker because they are the most reliable registrars;,’
picking a good domain name is enssential for ranking good on search engines *~.
Very true, if your domain name is sydneyplumber.com and people type the keywords “Sydney Plumber” most likely you will come on the top of the search result.
these really were wonderful