What do you consider when picking a domain name? Hi. When choosing a domain name, what will you consider? Tell me your experience about picking your desired domain names.
Yes very important, but also is the word a common phrase for the industry, possibly a decent search term, short and easy to type, not to hard to typo. Are you going for a generic name for the industry or a branded business name for the site. There are many things to consider, usually what I do is cram sessions finding all available domains over a day or 2, save to .txt file then pick my winners when I'm done. I do not settle for the first one, and many times will pick 1/2 or more of the ones I found just to have
I'll do it in an excel file since then I can sort my collected domain names, rank my domain names for several criteria, and so on. Much better to do it with txt.
Well to be truthful I can only think of common sense pointers for such a general question Each industry is different, and no sure fire way to come up with a huge winner. Check key word searches, keep it short and to the point
How about making the name search-engine friendly? How about include the keyword in your name? And so on. PS: Indeed I'm asking NetMidWest. Did you answer the question on his behalf, hrblcantra?
Actually, I was trying to be funny... but it is cheaper and less risky to take a readily available domain vs. one that may be on a blacklist somewhere. But hrblcantra is right, decide if you want to be remembered for your name, or if you need the extra boost a keyword-rich domain can give you. I went the branding route; I am not locked into just hosting, it is memorable (isn't it?) and when I started, keyword rich domains were not as heavily weighted. Today, I would do both - go for a brandable name you can register and protect, and buy a keyword rich domain as well. Seem the hyphenated domains will give you better results search-wise, but telling someone 'Go to my site, keyword hyphen phrase hyphen product dot com' gets old, and if 'keywordphraseproduct dot com' is an existing company in the same biz, you may actually lose out. If available, get all 3. Park the brandable and the non-hyphenated domain on top of the keyword rich hyphenated one, use a 301 to redirect the first two's traffic to the keyword rich one. Tell people verbally to check out 'MyCompany.com'. Use MyCompany in the logo. Later, you can change it, after you have gotten the name known and have strong results that do not depend heavily on the domain for ranking. This would also give you the option of targeting the big 3 engines with 3 different domain names, one for each, or to quickly switch due to penalty or other reasons, if needed. Some of the trademark research I did told me that a trademark is not available on a domain name itself - i.e. domain.tld. Trademark in this case drops the .tld, and what is left would be protectable, and therefore so would any other .tld's of the same name. Google.com is not protectable, but Google is, and so one can then go after someone who registers Google.net, and many variations of google + whatever.tld... One could also create subdomains with the keywords, a method which has shown promise for avoiding the sandbox. Hope this helps.
I'd go for easy to remember rather than SE friendliness. I think keywords in the domain name is short term thinking, not long term. People who like your site will not remember this-super-cool-hyphenated-site.com but would probably remember supercoolwidgets.com or something like that.
I knew that So are you going to suggest getting these 3: - brandable or memorable name; - keyword-rich or search-engine friendly name; - both hyphenated & non-hyphenated name? But will this spend a lot? Does any registrar offering discounts on registering simialr names, or so? Sorry, I can't get what you mean in this paragraph. "strong results that do not depend heavily on the domain for ranking" <-- Really?! On one hand, you says Google is protected. On the other hand, you says google.com, google.net etc. is not prtected. It seems strange. What I heard is the converse. If you contains a well-known brand name in your domains, the company may be able to sue you, and take your domain names off. Surely this is just one factor. Other factors play too. Sorry, but actually what it does by "avoiding the sandbox"?
It seems you suggest we shoul pick a brandable or memorable name. So why going for SE friendliness is inferior?
I am suggesting you purchase: brandablename.tld keyword-phrase-product.com keywordphraseproduct.com And use them with an entry into your .htaccess file of your hosting account like this: Sign up with your host as brandablename.com, set all the nameservers to the ones your host gives you, and have them park all on the hosting account. All the domains, and the files, will turn into keyword-phrase-product.com, but your email will be @brandablename.com, the domain which you will eventually use following this plan. Of course, what the industry is will determine the exact needs. Do some keyword research; click on 'Tools' at the top of this page for some goodies. You can get them cheap; search around. You can probably get all 3 for what I charge, but I picked the reseller program I have because it has a fast resolution time. I am locked in at a price that was fair a few years ago. When I find a cheaper one with the same advantage (less support for me, fast setup for the customer) I will go for it. "Strong results that do not depend heavily on the domain for ranking" means showing well in the search engines. Once you are well established, have good incoming links with good keywords in the anchor, perhaps have gotten into the DMOZ, things such as that. The question to ask is 'Once I switch, will it hurt my serps badly?' In trademarks, after about 1999(?) the word is the trademark. It was not foreseen in the original laws that a company would do business under a .com name, so to establish a trademark the first part must not infringe on another trademark. You could not go out and get a trademark for McDonalds.com for instance, since McDonald's is a trademark. Google is the protected trademark; the domain name dispute resolution system recognizes that. You can call yourself Expedia.com, but Expedia is the trademark, and the protection covers the name Expedia, and once business has been transacted, branding (getting it known) has happened, someone else cannot come in and call themselves Expedia.net. There are exceptions; occasionally you will hear of a small local company having the name first, but because they did not take steps to protect the name, someone else used it and made it more famous, they can be ordered to stop using it. Uniqueness is the key; hosting.com cannot trademark the word hosting, it is too generic. You will have to ask someone else about the sandbox and avoiding it. I have not experienced it firsthand. It is basically a filter for new domains, and seems to exist to ensure that a search engine spammer cannot simply change domains anytime. However, I will say this: I do think that some of what is attributed to the sandbox, especially extemely long sandboxing, is related to the 302 redirect hijack bug. Mind you, I am a web host, not an SEO or marketing expert. There are plenty of those here who may have a different take on this.
As to 2, I think this is applied to companies or profit-making firms, right? As to 4, I think this depends on whether the English word is keyword-rich, right?
The question is really why are you buying the name in the first place . I own names that cover the entire spectrum from short memorable product related ones like layouts.com to highly brandable like symbitoic.com , silly like chit.com , neat like musclewire.com, futuristic like scramjet.com or really long ones like reciprocal-links-manager.com. if your tring to invest and make money owning a domain without working forget it that was over in 1997 when all the good natural traffic single word urls were taken. If on the other hand you want to build an online business then go for a neat name and put in the time and effort to make it a household name. Nameboy.com can help you come up with unique names that might intrest you. when you do find a unique name you like you may want to trade mark it before you put in the time and energy to develop it.
Then when do you choose this name, when that name, etc.? That's true. Don't dream on getting rich by domain.
Someone once taught me to put your keyword in your domain name. Then make the keyword the title of your home page...this is especially powerful when going after offline local markets. Also, if someone has already taken your chosen .com, then go for .net or even .org. Dennis