When creating a domain name for your web site, here are some notes to create a domain name that would fit in with the web site you are building. But if you are registering your own personal name, please go ahead! You can read this article later. But if you are planning a theme for your site, then do consider a few pointers here.
- The domain name should be as short if possible so that people can easily remember and easy to type in at the address bar.
- It can be descriptive and somehow reflect the theme of your web site but not necessarily has to be so.
- If possible, you could include the all important keywords that people are searching for in the internet.
The internet domain name should be short so that it is easier to remember and it looks neater too. But this is not always possible considering the fact that there is now millions of website in the internet. To make a website featuring a short domain name is getting more difficult than ever. You can of course come up with an acronym. For example if you have a home business called “John Doe’s Home Business Services” you could name your web address as www.jdhbs.com.
Using acronym is short, but can be very cryptic. However, I feel that a three to four letter acronym is just about the maximum you can go before the internet domain name becomes too strange looking! However many of the shorter acronym too has been taken up and it might be difficult to obtain too.
You can of course string up two or more words to make up your own website domain name. Let’s take the above example you could create a www.johndoehomebusiness.com or www.johndoehomebusinessservices.com.
Yikes, that’s very long for a web URL! The former would be better than the latter as it is much shorter but may be less descriptive. Stringing words together does makes it harder to read. You can of course separate them out by using hyphen and help ease those sore tired eyes of internet users, e.g. www.john-doe-home-business-services.com
Another option is to mix-and-match full words with acronym that would help shorten the domain name to a somewhat more manageable length, say www.jd-home-business-services.com or www.john-doe-hbs.com. There are many ways to go about it and no special rules to follow, but do look at the domain name and do see which looks more pleasing to the eye and ears and throw in some creativity. You could very well come up with a web domain name that’s a winner!
There is no hard and fast rule when choosing a domain name. Take for instance Google, Yahoo they are brand in itself synonymous with web searches and web services and yet the name has no relation to the services which they offer. Take real life examples like Xerox, Kodak, and many more, the names are unique; they are short and easy to remember.
But do remember they have all the resources to do brand building whether offline or online. While for the rest of us, using a unique name is nice to have, but you may want to go another direction and that is to use the web domain name as a possible source for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) keyword search. For example if you are creating a web site about losing weight and there are lots of searches for “weight loss in 10 days”, you may want to consider creating an internet domain name with www.weightlossin10days.com which helps the search engines find your web site faster.
Another matter about internet domain name, should you go for .com, .net, .biz, .info, .org, .edu, etc.? As far as possible you should go for a .com domain as it is more universal and the most common suffix that most people will key in the address box. .net comes in a close second and the rest are rather specialized. .org is more for governmental organization, while .edu would be better suited for educational institution and universities.
And what about regional country suffixes like .uk, .jp, etc? Unless your business is purely concentrated on your specific geographic location, in any case a .com would still be a better choice than a .com.uk or .co.jp as it has a much more universal appeal.
So there you have it, give your web domain name some thought before jumping right in to create your domain name. However if you still wish to have a preceding step before registering the internet domain name, you may want to consider the SEO aspect of it. So let’s go on to registering your first very own website domain name (and web hosting provider too)!
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