Five Simple Steps to Picking a Winning Domain Name
Choosing a domain
name is one of the most important aspects of beginning your new adventure
online. A well chosen domain name can mean the difference between a site that ranks
high and a site that nobody will ever see. Here are five tips to ensure your success
and get you off on the right foot.
Brainstorm
Let the thinking begin! Start brainstorming by making a list of keywords and ideas
that are relevant to your site. If you’ll be advertising your pizza business online,
some of your keywords may be pizza, fast pizza delivery, Italian, pizza toppings,
pizza coupons, and so on. If you need help generating ideas and keywords, use Google’s
Keyword Tool. Get twenty words down on paper and then see what you can do
with them.
Easy to Remember
Your domain name can be up to 67 characters long. That gives you a lot of options.
But just because your name can be that long doesn’t mean it should be. Shoot for
words that are easy to remember. People are more likely to have pizza.com stick
in their heads than abcdefghijklmnopizza.com.
Hard to Misspell
Never pick a name that can be spelled more than one way unless you want to inadvertently
send traffic and business to your competitor. There.com is short and to the point,
but so is Their.com and Theyre.com. Get the idea? Only go for names that are hard
to misspell.
Go Easy on the Extras
While it’s perfectly acceptable to add dashes and numbers to your domain name, do
so with discretion. IMakePizza.com is good; I-Make-Pizza.com is hard to type and
even harder to remember.
Branding
Whether you’re going to be running a business online or writing a personal blog,
your domain name will brand you. Think of popular, well trafficked sites like Yahoo,
Google, Flickr and Amazon. What does Google really mean? Google has branded itself
as the most popular search engine in the world by picking an easy to remember domain
name and then creating an image around it. In order to brand yourself, you’ll need
to separate from the pack. If you wanted pizza.com but the name is taken, don’t
go with pizza.net. Brand yourself as an individual.
Unique
Your domain name should be fresh and unique. If your main competitor is pizza.com,
don’t use pizza2.com. What about IMakePizza.com? Play with words and don’t be afraid
to pull out the Thesaurus for inspiration.
Once you’ve brainstormed and put together a list of words, check their availability
of names with online tools like PC Names or
GoDaddy. Is your possible future domain name available? Great, now run
it by the
Copyright Office to make sure it isn’t trademarked or copyrighted. It’s
rare that choosing a copyrighted word will get you in legal trouble, but it does
happen. Better safe than sorry.
When you’ve completed all of the above steps and locked in on the perfect name.
Register it with a domain registrar and you’ll be in business and ready to become
the next big thing online.