Choosing Domain Names

Your domain acts as your identity on the Internet. It is a kind of personal signature that tells a lot about you. Hence, it is equally important to have an appropriate domain name as it is to have a website. Here are some tips and tricks to choose a domain name that will help you in the long run and will also prove to be attractive for the Internet surfers.

It is a good practice to keep the name of your domain and your website one and the same. This helps people remember your domain name by your website name. Believe it or not, this will be a big advantage to you because it is a commonly accepted fact that people like to remember the fewest of things and with the least of efforts. Another advantage is that visitors to your website will find it easy to navigate if they can recall the domain name in short order.

The second important point to be kept in mind while choosing a domain is that if your domain serves business purposes for you, then you must choose your brand name as the domain name. The chief reason for this is the fact that people recognize popular brands or items much faster than anything else and if your domain name is same as that of your brand name, then you know how much business potential it has. Now consider this situation in which your competitor has a domain name or a product name similar to yours. In this scenario, you know the loss of business it can cause if an unwary customer lands in your competitor’s website all due to a poorly chosen domain name.

As a general rule, shorter domain names are considered better for the simple reason that shorter ones are obviously easier to remember than others and a person intending to visit your website does not have to spend a ‘lifetime’ typing out the domain name in the explorer. The chances of committing spelling errors are reduced substantially while using a shorter domain name. This saves a lot of frustration. But then the advantage of a long domain name is that search engines are more likely to find longer ones than shorter names.

It is best to avoid hyphens in your domain name as in all probability; users will leave it out unknowingly while typing it out. Also, no user would want to bear the pain of typing extra characters at any point of time. But the use of hyphens may enable you to stick to the domain name of your choice, in case other similar names have already been used up.

It will be good to use unconventional words like “the”, “my”, “your”, etc. in your domain name as these will give your domain name a distinct identity.

It is also important to choose the name of the top level domain in such a way that reflects the true nature of your website. If your website is set up with the primary intention of commercial activities, then you must go with “. Com”. Same rule applies to domains of other nature as well.

After a name has been chosen, advertise it in every possible manner so that your site enjoys popularity and traffic.