By: James Woolley
Choosing a domain name for your website is a very important decision, and should not be taken lightly. A bad choice of name could seriously affect the potential profitability of your online business, and prevent it achieving as much success as it should do.
There are many factors you should consider when selecting a domain name.
Firstly, you should try and include your main keyword(s) in your name if at all possible. This will help your site in terms of search engine rankings, because search engines generally rank websites slightly higher if they include their main keyword(s) in their domain name.
In saying that though, ideally it should be relatively short and easy to remember. This is fairly obvious, but is a mistake that a lot of webmasters make. I always prefer names without any dashes or numbers in, as this increases the risk of people mistyping your address into their browsers, and try to keep them as short and as memorable as possible.
Sometimes though it's just not possible or desirable to include your keywords in your domain name. For example, your main keyword terms or phrases could be two or three words long, and if they're long words as well, then any available domain name you find that contains these keywords may simply be too long. Also, you may decide that any domain name containing your main keywords would be too generic and unmemorable, so in this instance you would probably have more success trying to brand yourself, and creating a unique, distinctive domain name, that sets you apart from your competition.
Indeed a lot of major companies now prefer to brand themselves with a memorable domain name, and don't include any keywords at all in their name. You only have to look at some of the biggest companies online to see evidence of this. A lot of offline companies also do this when building an online presence, by simply using their offline company name as their domain name.
One other thing to consider is that you should not use a trademarked name in your own domain name. This is again fairly obvious, but can be a serious problem. You should double-check before you choose a domain name as you could potentially face legal action in the future when the company who owns the trademarked name finds out about your site. At the very least they could demand that you give up the right to the domain name, which could be catastrophic to your business if you have to suddenly drop your name and go for a completely new one.
Finally, whatever name you choose, I recommend, if at all possible, to choose a name with the suffix .com. This will instantly give your website increased credibility, as people still refer to online businesses as dot-coms, even those people that have never used the internet. Also I know from personal experience that when I browse various websites I will always give more credence to a website ending in .com, than one ending in .info or .biz, for example.
