Choosing a Domain Name

Choosing a domain name is one of the hardest things you’ll have to do when building a web presence. Although names will come easily to you, with over 60 million web names already in existence, finding an available domain name, that hasn’t already been registered is going to be very difficult.

Also, if you are a beginner in the web ownership arena, chances are that you don’t realize that there are a many places to buy domain names besides the conventional registrars, such as Register.com, GoDaddy and Lunar Pages. There are many deals out there for already existing and cheap domain names and quite a few places to buy them.

First however, you have to decide why you want a domain name and what you are planning to do with it.

What kind of a domain name are you trying to choose?

• Business Domain Name
• Company Domain Name
• Personal or Blog Name
• For Profit Niche Blog Name
• Niche Domain Name
• Affiliate Domain Name

Each of these types of sites has its own criteria as far as deciding how to approach choosing a name.

Business Domain Name

When looking to purchase a business domain name, you are looking to brand the name. That is, you are looking to associate the company name and the product you want to be associated with, for example, Clancy’s Moving and Storage very easily becomes clancysmovingandstorage, clancysmoversandstorage or clancysmovingstorage. There is a very big probability that your name will be available with a .com name extension.

For a local company, your site description should include the states that where you operate.

Company Domain Name

If you own a larger business or if you operate globally or worldwide on line, chances are also good that your domain name will be easily available because your name is a trademarked.

However, today, I would not invent a company name without making sure the accompanying web name was also available.

I also want to caution anyone who is trying to purchase a company associated domain name and I’ll use Toys R Us as an example. The “R Us” part of the companies name is trademarked and the usage of “R Us” mark is heavily defended by the company. If you are choosing a domain name, make sure you choose a name that is not associated with a known trademark.

Instead, think of setting up a name you can brand, such as “Amazon,” “eBay” or “Google.” When the software development team of the content management system (CMS) known as “Mambo” split over development rights, the team managers who resigned from Mambo had to choose a new name for their branch of the software and for their website. They chose “Joomla,” which is the phonetic spelling of the Swahili word "Jumla", which means "all together" or "as a whole." They felt the name was in keeping with international participation in the development of what they were trying to accomplish.

While most people are in pursuit of keyword branded company names, many web search engine optimization (SEO) experts are acknowledging that Google is moving towards higher recognition “branded” names as opposed to “keyword” names.

Personal or Blog Names
Like business names, personal website or blog names are easier to choose, because they are not keyword specific.

If you look up “blog” on Google, the first page is loaded with blogging systems and RSS feed listings. And then you’ll find listings for free blogs that are hosted on these blogging systems. If you use a free blogging system, you don’t have to buy a domain name, but you still have to choose a name that’s available on sites such as “WordPress,” “Typepad,” “Blogger,” or “LiveJournal.”

With the advent of blog spamming, blog keyword domain names are at a premium. But if you want to set up the Jones Family website, you can probably get “wordpress.com/jonesfamilywebsite” or “blogspot/jonesfamilyblog.”

Domains set up on free sites serve their purpose. A family site, a personal diary, or a place for you to store something of interest you’d like to write about.

Free sites like “LiveJournal” let you connect with others who share your interests. You can set up your own pages, join communities that appeal to you and network work a host of people, you would otherwise never meet.

These sites were the beginning of social media and social marketing.

For Profit Niche Blog Name (Free Blogging Sites)
Every website owner who’s in this business for a profit recognizes that being found on page 1 of the search engine results pages (SERPs) is great for the bottom line. While blogging started as way to share ideas, it quickly became a profit center for savvy affiliate marketers and site owners who make money using Adsense.

Also, never forget that most free blogging systems run their own ads over your content. They have to pay the bills, too. The best systems, not necessary the highest rated ones by Google, will allow you to share in the profits when people visit your content and click on ads on your content pages.

Since you can have a niche blog or an article on a niche blog, that ranks higher in the SERPs than your actual website, having a niche, keyword driven domain name is a good thing for a profit, niche blog.

Personally, I would never build a blog or a website without spending the time to research keywords.

Blogging system subwebs are traded. Most blogging systems have policies against this, but it happens.

For Profit Niche Blog or Website Name (Your Own Domain)
Choosing a for profit niche blog or website name is very much a keyword driven affair. Believe it or not, you first decide which keywords you want to go after and then you try to buy a domain name that matches your keywords.

Why do it this way? You can rank higher in the SERPs if your site name, matches your keywords, site description and article titles. This is an artificially system driven by the search engines. Their algorithms or the mathematical calculations they perform to rank sites include an analysis of matching the site name, keywords, site description and article titles.

However, the algorithms also include back links or other sites that link back to yours. Since marketers have abused the entire ranking system (gaming the system,) the search engines are looking for links that have been in existence for a longer period of time, from older websites that are ranked highly. These are called links from authority sites. And yes, sometimes if you ask, an authority site will link to yours.

Once you have an idea of what keyword works for what you are interested in, then chose a domain name that matches your keyword.

The only way to get around this is to make sure your site is found, and that your articles are great. Some people make a point of writing controversial articles (linkbait) as a way to get links from other sites.

Affiliate Domain Name
Affiliate domain names are personality, product and keyword driven names. Think of an affiliate site as a car dealership for General Motors. There are thousands of dealers around the country. And they are not necessarily in competition if their geographic locations don’t match. (The equivalent of a geographic location for an affiliate would be an affiliate mailing list.).

Affiliate domain names can be personality driven, Jane’s Marketing – janesmarketing, product driven – Blue Widget World – bluewidgetworld or keyword driven, Blue Widget Reviews –bluewidgetreviews.

In a personality driven name, Jane would be a well-known marketer, and has a mailing list that is interested in recommendations.

In a product driven name, you’re assuming that whoever made your product has the domain name for the product or bluewidget. So, the idea is to include the name of the product in the domain name.

In a keyword driven name, you know that before people buy a product, they usually search for a review of the product, therefore bluewidgetreviews would be a term that is heavily searched.

If you’re a newbie, we’ve introduced you to a lot of new terms and you may want to reread this article to take them in. If you’re experienced, this is a refresher on what to think about before you buy a domain name.

As we mentioned, when you’re choosing a domain name, the domain registrar might not have this name available. However, there is a thriving aftermarket for domain names. Purchasing a domain name that already exists may wind up being cheaper than buying and hosting a new name.