How to pick domain names that work.

One of the most difficult things I wrestled with at the start of my Internet Business(es) was the choice of a suitable domain name. I mean, c'mon, name your website after the product or service you sell and you are done. Right?

Unfortunately, its not so simple!

I remember spending a few sleepless nights before we settled on the one we finally picked. In fact I even booked a few domain names that we never used eventually. Of course we never had a book such as this to guide us in our domain naming adventure.

And its getting more difficult by the minute. After all, your domain name is something that you will be most likely living with for most of your waking hours.

As far as picking a name for your business is concerned, you can even find professional naming firms that offer just such a service. The cost may vary anywhere from $1000 to upwards of $30,000. There is a reason people are willing to pay that kind of money.

The name of your domain determines your success on the web to some extent just like the name of your business does in the offline world.

At the same time, there are a few things that are not so similar.

People have to type your name in before they get to your web-site, your criteria change when you consider a domain name.

Here are a small list of a few things you need to consider.
a) What should your domain name be like?
b) How should you form your domain name?
c)What should you avoid?
d) How can you come up with a few suggestions?
e) Are there any tools you can use?

1. The name should be reflective of your business. This of course, goes without saying. It should also be reflective of you. It will be appearing quite often right under your name on your business cards, letterheads, etc. May be even your check books, vehicles and quite a few other places.

2. It may reflect the structure of your business. If you are a professional, you can have your full name as your business. On the other hand, if you are an incorporated organization, you need something better than just your name. If you are a work-from-home type of business, you cannot call your web-site momandpopinc.com. Even though there are no domain naming rules right now, it is just better to make it easier for your customers. Also, it would be a good idea to avoid creating a wrong impression in your customers' minds.

3. It should be easy to use(type in). Spelling the name should not be difficult. Opthalmologists.com is okay if you are a B2B firm but don't use it if you do not expect the average person to know your spelling.

4. The name should be memorable. Everyone remembers Stupid.com or Hotmail.com. Shorter is always better in this case. If it is not short, it has to be something people can remember easily. How do you make a domain name memorable? You evoke an emotion in your customers hearts. You identify with a strong feeling they are already feeling and name it. Eg. "InsuranceCompaniesAreStupid.com"

5. It could describe your entire business. Dictionary.com says everything about the business in its domain name. Anyone coming to the site does not expect to find a car dealership.

6. It should be relevant to your target market. If most of your customers are baby boomers, they may respond to fight-diabetes.com than better-health.com. A irreverent term may jive better with teeny-boppers than a respectful one.

7. It should be Search-Engine-Optimizable. This is one of the most important issues affecting the success of your web-site. The search engines give a great deal of importance to your web-site domain name matching the contents in the web-site. IF your domain name says "GreatCars.com" and your web-site is about history of racing or some such, the search engines consider neither "Racing" nor "Cars" as important when considering ranking.

8. Avoid using a domain name that is similar to an already existing one. Especially so, if it is in the same business. You don't want people going accidentally to your rival better-eggs.com instead of coming to your better-eggs-today.com. This gets a bit weird as most companies in the same business tend to name their domains almost exactly the same.

9. Avoid having the same name as someone else's offline business. If you already own Lawns And Gardens in the brick and mortar world, you can have lawnsandgardens.com, but somebody else owns it and he can uphold it in court that it is his trademark, you are better off straying far from using that as your domain name.

10. Consider using a hypen to separate multiple words. This is one question I have been asked many times. As internet domain names get taken by the bucketfuls, we are seeing very few single word domains left over.

If you have two distinct words making up your domain name, use the word with a "-". It not only makes your name clearer to users, it makes for better Search Engine Optimization. If the name is already taken without the hypen, leave it for now and add the name to the end of your list. Consider other words/combinations.

If possible, you must get the name of your domain without the hyphens and point it at the other name with the hypens. This is called redirection. When users type in either name, they are taken to the same web-site. This can be done with multiple domain names.

11. Consider using an acronym if your offline business name is too long. IBM.com is easier than International Business....

12. The shorter your domain name, the more people can remember it. Especially if your full name is too long to be typed out. Anybody knows what WWF.org is?

13. Consider using adjectives like "best", "hot", "Great", "powerful" etc. Evoking a strong positive emotion in your customer is of paramount importance to making a sale at your web-site.

14. Consider using action verbs. BuyDomains.com, GetMarried.com etc. In fact, Learn, Get and Buy are the most prominent words that figure when using action verbs for the domain names.

15. Consider using a geographical specification if you service only a definite local area. If the more generic term for your business is taken, you can consider using the geographical location.

Many people use "America" or "USA" at the end to distinguish their web-site from others of the same ilk. Remember though, that you only fooled the search engine. Unless you prominently display the name on the content of your web-site, you can confuse your human users. Eg. motorcycle.com and motorcycle-usa.com.

Along with State or county boundaries, you must also consider what country your business operates in. As per the domain naming convention, each country has been provided with a 2 letter abbreviaion for domains.

Eg. US gets .US and UK gets .UK. Tuvalu got .TV which the country leased out to a private operator in return for a windfall for each of the country’s residents. Talk about fortune falling on your lap.

16. Consider using specification terms like factory, central, expert, consultant, service, warehouse, secrets etc. This is a carry-over from the traditional naming model. Think AnimationFactory.com, Comedycentral.com, SalaryExpert.com, StockConsultant.com, AirportService.com, MattressWarehouse.com, WindowsSecrets.com etc.

17. Avoid using more than 3 words. Unless of course, they are short and sweet. And memorable. Or part of the folklore in your niche. There are always exception to this rule. I suggest you keep your domain name to 2 words maximum if you can help it.

18. It should be available in the .com domain. This is one of the bigger problems you face when you are ready to buy your domain. You need to find your domain name in the .com domain unless it is a government site(.gov) or a non-profit(.org) or an educational site(.edu). Quite a few sites use ".net" as ".com" domain availability becomes rarer by the day.

Most people automatically type in ".com" and hit the Enter key due to force of habit. If you have a competitor with the same domain name but ending in .com, your business just took a hit. 19. Consider using words from languages other than English. You could also use certain variations of well known words or phrases.

20. An Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) is an Internet domain name that (potentially) contains non-ASCII characters. Such domain names could contain letters with diacritics, as required by many non-English languages, or characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese or Hindi. However, the standard for domain names does not allow such characters, and much work has gone into finding a way to internationalize domain names into a standard ASCII format, thereby preserving the stability of the domain name system.

Now that you have a checklist of ideas to help, go right ahead and start developing your own domain names list. It helps to have a big list ordered in terms of priority. If you don't get the ones you like most, you can go down and find the best ones that are still available.