Wednesday 8 August 2012

Six Important Things To Consider When Finding A Domain Name

Importance of Having a Domain Name

As compared to the real world wherein strategic techniques are of great importance in order to achieve success, in the business industry, an effective domain name is considered a primary factor to achieving rankings, traffic and sales online.

Characteristics of a Domain Name

If you are planning to find a domain name for a future website, you must first take a look at the following characteristics to filter out the undesirable results:
  • Short
In finding a domain name, you need to bear in mind that the shorter, the better. The reason behind this is that people will remember it easily. In this case, your target name must range between 5-20 characters or maybe at most three words.
  • Easy to Remember
A domain name that is easy to remember allows people to simply type it in the address bar in case they need some information from your site. Although bookmarking features are available, most users do not utilize them. Therefore, if you have a complex domain name, the tendency is that you will lose a valuable number of visitors.
  • Easy to Spell
Always keep in mind that while a misspelled domain name will potentially bring visitors to your website, but the search engines no longer favor misspellings as they did years ago and the saavy internet users tend to mistrust these types of websites. In this case, you need to ensure that you are not using strange combinations of letters and numbers, foreign words, words that are difficult to pronounce or something that can be misspelled by your visitors. It is better to use simple and familiar yet striking words for the users to remember and spell out easily.
  • Make use of a “.com” extension
There are numerous reasons why you should use a .com extension. First, .com extension is by far the most popular extension all over the world, meaning it is what a lot of internet users type after the domain name. Next, it is a great help in partially reducing promotion efforts. When trying to find a domain name, .com extensions are ideal, even if you must incorporate a brand keyword with your target keywords to secure one.
  • Descriptive
Since visitors come from anywhere, an effective way of dragging them to visit your site is the way your domain name describes your website. For instance, if your site is about “do-it-yourself” crafts, you must include “diy” or “crafts” in your domain name.
  • Avoid the Use of Numbers and Hyphens
A lot of visitors tend to ignore the numbers and hyphens in the domain name. For them, it is considered as an additional burden in finding websites. For example, if your domain name is “do-it-yourself.com”, most probably, visitors will just type “doityourself.com” and ignore the hyphens. If your website becomes sucessful, you can bet someone else will take advantage of your traffic with your domain name minus the dashes.

The Key to A Great Domain Name

In the end, in order to find a domain name that will cater to the niche of your website, consider the abovementioned characteristics. This way, you can persuade a lot of people to visit your site and still come back for updates, therefore, generating traffic.  Remember, you need not to follow all of the characteristics, but starting out by filtering out the undesirables will lead you first to the most eligible candidates. Four or five of the guidelines above will still lead to a good and effective domain name.
Theresa Happe works with ByDomains.com, the largest marketplace for finding a domain name for your online business. Search for .com domains in any niche, utilizing the filters to sort out the most valuable domains for your business first.

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