by: Daniel Moro
Choosing a good domain name is one of most important steps in setting up your online business, but it’s getting harder and harder to find good names that are still available. You could use a domain name with hyphens, but is that really a good idea? Let’s quickly review what makes a good domain name. A domain name needs to be relevant, easy to remember, keyword optimized, and free from trademark conflicts. It should also be shorter. Although seven characters or less is ideal, you may have to settle for a domain name that’s a little longer. So you’ve just set up your new barbecue grills business and now you discover that barbecuegrills.com is already taken. Should you consider hyphenating the domain name to barbecue-grills.com or should you go back to the drawing board? The first choice should always be to take the name without a hyphen. Having established that, there are some exceptions. Let’s look at hyphenated domain names and when they are might be good to use. Domains with hyphens can sometimes be a good idea if you really want certain words in your domain name but all the domains without hyphens are already taken. Another reason to use a hyphen is when the words you plan to use are harder to read without the hyphen. The domain hotellamps.com is harder to read than hotel-lamps.com. That is not necessarily a great domain name but it does serve to illustrate the point that some domains are easier to read with a hyphen. You might also consider using hyphens for search engine optimization. Some people suggest that using hyphens helps the search engines to distinguish your keywords better. This may be a good option for webmasters whose primary goal is to optimize their sites for traffic from natural search engine rankings. The only catch here is that this could change over time since search engines are constantly adjusting their search algorithms. Incidentally, if you decide not to use hyphens in your domain name, watch out for any unintended double meanings that might be embarrassing. To illustrate this point a couple of fairly suspicious domain names are therapistfinder.com and molestationnursery.com. In case you are wondering the latter was reportedly the domain for the Mole Station Native Nursery based in New South Wales, Australia, although it seems, fortunately, to have moved. Whatever reason you have for using a hyphen in your domain name, it would be good to remember one thing. Some people will forget the hyphen when they type your domain name. So whenever you invest in promoting your site, some lucky webmaster who owns the un-hyphenated version of your domain is going to get some free traffic, courtesy of your hard work. As you can see, there are some situations when using a hyphen in your domain name may be a good decision.
About The Author
Daniel Moro has been successfully building online businesses for ten years. Download your free report on '10 Remarkably Effective Traffic Building Techniques' at http://www.DanielMoro.com/domains.htm
Friday, September 7, 2007
Website Basics-Choosing a Domain Name
by: Richard James
The first step in building a website is in the choice of a domain name. Whether you are a doctor, lawyer, plumber, aluminum siding salesman, or if you want to start up a website to feature your family dog Spot, the entire endeavor begins with the choice of a domain name. The next logical question you might ask, is “What is a good domain name?”. The answer is, it depends. For example, if you are the person above who wants to build a website devoted to Spot, the family dog, then the answer is that the choice of a domain name really doesn’t matter. Why? Because you probably don’t really care about gaining a lot of traffic to your website, your site is probably only something you are going to produce for family and friends, to let them know about the latest goings on in Spot’s life. In a case like this, it does not matter whatsoever if you find a domain name like “ourdogspot.com” or not, since most likely you will only be giving out the website address to a few friends and family and maybe Aunt Tilly in Toledo. In fact, in a case like the above, you could call the site anything you wanted to, “dogdiary.com” or even “catsdontlikespot.com” or something even as silly as “lookatthis.com”, which really has nothing at all to do with the subject matter of the website itself. The point is that in a case like this, there is no real concern with getting a lot of visitors to the website other than friends and family and Aunt Tilly in Toledo, so there is no real harm in naming the website ANYTHING, because you will be giving out the website address to a select few people. BUT…… What if the website is for business? What if I do want it to attract attention? The simple answer is, it pays to have a domain name that reflects your site or business. If your website is about car parts for example, do you really expect the average web surfer to remember how to get to your website if it is named "bobsthingsforsale.com" or some other unrelated name? The best strategy is to find a domain name that directly relates to your business, whether it is the business name itself or related to the category of business. For example, a car parts website should have a domain name like carparts.com or bobsautoparts.com, something that immediately associates the domain name with the theme of the site. It’s all about branding, and making a lasting impression on the target audience or customers. You can find domain names by checking the WhoIs database on the internet. While there are any number of places on the net to do this, we have conveniently placed a domain name search engine on www.StartMyWebsiteToday.com for this very purpose. After searching the domain name, the results given will instantly show whether or not the domain name is available, and if so, give you the option to immediately register it. If not, several alternative domain names will be proposed, to help you fine tune your search, or possibly giving you an acceptable alternative domain name to register instead. In the next article, we discuss strategies for choosing a domain name, long or short, hyphenated or not, and generic or brand names.
About The Author
Richard James has been a contributing author for this website and is an acknowledged expert in the field of domain names. He can be found on the internet at this website: http://www.startmywebsitetoday.com This article is copyrighted, please do not alter in any way.
The first step in building a website is in the choice of a domain name. Whether you are a doctor, lawyer, plumber, aluminum siding salesman, or if you want to start up a website to feature your family dog Spot, the entire endeavor begins with the choice of a domain name. The next logical question you might ask, is “What is a good domain name?”. The answer is, it depends. For example, if you are the person above who wants to build a website devoted to Spot, the family dog, then the answer is that the choice of a domain name really doesn’t matter. Why? Because you probably don’t really care about gaining a lot of traffic to your website, your site is probably only something you are going to produce for family and friends, to let them know about the latest goings on in Spot’s life. In a case like this, it does not matter whatsoever if you find a domain name like “ourdogspot.com” or not, since most likely you will only be giving out the website address to a few friends and family and maybe Aunt Tilly in Toledo. In fact, in a case like the above, you could call the site anything you wanted to, “dogdiary.com” or even “catsdontlikespot.com” or something even as silly as “lookatthis.com”, which really has nothing at all to do with the subject matter of the website itself. The point is that in a case like this, there is no real concern with getting a lot of visitors to the website other than friends and family and Aunt Tilly in Toledo, so there is no real harm in naming the website ANYTHING, because you will be giving out the website address to a select few people. BUT…… What if the website is for business? What if I do want it to attract attention? The simple answer is, it pays to have a domain name that reflects your site or business. If your website is about car parts for example, do you really expect the average web surfer to remember how to get to your website if it is named "bobsthingsforsale.com" or some other unrelated name? The best strategy is to find a domain name that directly relates to your business, whether it is the business name itself or related to the category of business. For example, a car parts website should have a domain name like carparts.com or bobsautoparts.com, something that immediately associates the domain name with the theme of the site. It’s all about branding, and making a lasting impression on the target audience or customers. You can find domain names by checking the WhoIs database on the internet. While there are any number of places on the net to do this, we have conveniently placed a domain name search engine on www.StartMyWebsiteToday.com for this very purpose. After searching the domain name, the results given will instantly show whether or not the domain name is available, and if so, give you the option to immediately register it. If not, several alternative domain names will be proposed, to help you fine tune your search, or possibly giving you an acceptable alternative domain name to register instead. In the next article, we discuss strategies for choosing a domain name, long or short, hyphenated or not, and generic or brand names.
About The Author
Richard James has been a contributing author for this website and is an acknowledged expert in the field of domain names. He can be found on the internet at this website: http://www.startmywebsitetoday.com This article is copyrighted, please do not alter in any way.
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