Dialing Down to Your Selection of a Domain Name
This series of posts is for the person asking “How do I start my own website?”. To begin with: Strategic planning and long term vision will serve you best in your choice of domain names. 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. Fine tuning your choice and thinking it through will help secure good placement with search engines and in the minds of your potential visitors/customers.
You have searched for your desired domain name and it turns out someone else has already snagged it. Now what? Can you still get it? The answer is a qualified YES. 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. There are other ways to get the 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 what you were after! Word to the wise: keep the domain name as short as possible. The longer the name, especially with dashes in between words, the more likely that potential visitors to your site will enter it incorrectly into their browsers, thus foiling the chances of them visiting your website and costing you customers! 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. But be careful: the last thing you want is to cause internet domain name confusion because you have decided on a domain name registration that is so close to a major competitor’s name that you end up losing business to them.
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. Who would want to type it into a browser? My website is www.StartYourWebsiteToday.com When choosing my domain name I wanted something that in a few words would tell the web surfer what to expect from my website. Good name selection can be helpful also with search engine ranking. You will want to definitely keep the name as short and sweet as possible, but at the same time let the visitor know what to expect when he surfs to your website. Remember, keep it short!
Brand Name or Generic The answer here is it depends. If your business is known by a brand name, and it is a well known name, of course it is the best possible strategy to try to register that 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. So if possible cover all the bases. 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. Good website design begins always with the wise choice of a domain name.
Tags: 
