Selecting a domain name
Selecting your domain name involves more than just thinking of something you like and slapping it into your website. There are many factors for you to consider when selecting and registering your domain name, and some things to avoid as well. Our guide for selecting domain names walks you through what to keep in mind and what not to do when choosing your domain name.
What you should do
Make it relevantAs a general rule, the domain name you select should be relevant to the purpose and content of your web site. For example, if you are going to sell paper clips on your site, it isn't practical or effective to use a name like www.purplelizards.com; you may think it's a really cool name, but it has nothing to do with paper clips. Using a name like www.thepaperclipdepot.com would be more effective, as it contains the product (paper clips) that you are involved in, and creates more benefits for SEO (more on that in a minute). If you can include the core product/service/idea into the domain name, it helps to brand your site to that concept, and benefits your users as it can be easier for them to relate the domain name to the product.
Your domain name helps to identify your business or concept to potential site visitors, often before they ever visit your site. Using our previous example, let's say that you create a company that makes and sells paper clips, and your company is called The Paper Clip Depot. Now you decide to set up a website to promote your company and do online sales of paper clips, and you set up a site with the domain name www.thepaperclipdepot.com. Potential customers may know of your business, and want to be able to buy your products online, but don't know if you have a website or not, so many times they will type your business name into a search engine. Because you've identified your domain name with your business, they will easily find your website.
It's helpful if your customers and users, both current and potentially new ones, can easily remember your domain name. If it's simple, short, catchy and contains common words, it's beneficial to them and you. Using unusual words, numbers or alternate spellings can sometimes work for you, but also has the potential to cause confusion, so you should be cautious in the variations you use if you do so. While the most basic common words are probably already registered as single word domain names ( for example, food.com, work.com, etc. ), you can combine 2 or more words into something easy to remember, and may be more effective than using altered spelling or unusual words.
Search engines take into account the words included into domain names, and this can have a big influence on how web sites are ranked for keywords. When a search engine sees that a website is about paper clips, and the domain name contains the words paper clips, the search engine will give the site a higher ranking than a paper clip site with the domain name of www.purplelizards.com. Search engines are rather intelligent, and for the most part do a good job of analyzing many factors in a web page to determine how they should rank in search results. This is another reason why spelling variations in a domain name can backfire in trying to be memorable; search engines may not relate a mispelled word with the content of the page.
Obviously it has to be unique, in that no two sites can have the same domain name. In this case, unique means that you should avoid a domain name that is too similair to another domain name, which can cause confusion for your visitors.
What you shouldn't do
Make it sound "spammy"It's very easy to create a domain name that many people won't take seriously. Some words in a domain name, and how they're used, tend to make potential visitors leery of the site. So, while www.thepaperclipdepot.com sounds legitimate, using variations like www.thebestpaperclipdepot.com, www.mybestpaperclipdepot.com, & www.yourbestpaperclipdepot.com may give the feeling of a SPAM site. So maybe you do have the best paper clip website on the internet, but how you name that site can have negative reactions form potential users.
Short and sweet is a good general rule, for good reason. Long domain names can be hard for users to remember, and have a negative impact on the SEO aspect of your domain name. If you were to use a domain name with too many words to describe it, for example www.thepaperclipdepotonlinesalesandservice.com, it may not only sound bad to potential visitors, but runs into the area of sounding "spammy" as well.
Copy a popular domain nameTrying to cash in on an established domain name eliminates being unique, suggests that you are copying the established domain, and can lead to legal problems. While everyone knows the name "YouTube.com", you will not do yourself any favors by trying to use a domain name like "YooToob.com". Aside from the fact that most people will not take the name seriously, owners of existing prominent domain names may file lawsuits for infringement and damages, will probably be granted a "Cease & Desist" order against you, and it may cost you financially in the long run.