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Author:
Clare Lawrence

Tips on Domain Name Choice

By Clare Lawrence 3rd November 2003 Clare is the CEO of Discount Domains Ltd a leading UK Domain name registration service.

Before buying your domain name, give some thought to the followng:-

1) If possible use your sites name as the basis of your domain name e.g www.discountdomainsuk.com for Discount Domains UK. This might seem common sense but not every site follows the convention. If you use your name in your URL it will be much easier for your customers to find you.

2) Generic names – if you can register a generic domain such as toys.com that’s great, but most of these have already gone. Also getting ranked in the search engines is likely to be harder. Selected a domain closer to your market segment will cut down the competition. E.g toyplanes.com

3) Hyphenated Names – Its easy to forget the hyphen! Which is the problem, particularly if your customer remembers your name but not your URL. Though on a positive note hyphenated names are less likely to be registered already.

4) If the .com or .co.uk extension is not available then consider the alternative TLD ( Top level domain types) such as .net or .biz. If your domain name has already been registered then approach the owner and ask if they’ll sell. They may accept a £100. If you ask, they can only say no.

5) Plurals. Very often a domain name will be free in the plural but not in the singular form. It’s a personal choice, but if your prefered choice of domain name is not available you might be stuck.

6) Short or Long domains – A short domain name is more memorable, but less likely to be available. A longer domain is harder to remember, but can contain more keywords which is important as some of the search engines, use keywords in a domain name as part of the search algorithm.

7) Which Top Level Domain Type - .com, .co.uk , .net etc This is a question I am often asked. There is no evidence that any domain name type is given preference by the search engines. However some search engines such as Google, have local searches e.g www.google.co.uk which do select local content. Customer often get re-assurance from seeing a local TLD as they know they are dealing with a local company etc. You can, of course, register all of them!

8) Variations – If your prefered domain name is not available then its always worth trying a prefix my e.g mydomains.com or suffix e.g domains4U.com etc

About the Author
Clare Lawrence is CEO of Discount Domains Ltd – A leading UK provider of Domain name registration and Web Hosting services. Please feel free to re-publish this article provided this reference box remains together with a hyperlink to http://www.discountdomainsuk.com Clare can also be contacted on clare@discountdomainsuk.com.

A Quick Note From The Publisher... If you like the article above, you may be interested in the following article which is also related to Domain Names... Deleted Domains Can Kickstart a New Website Are you getting ready to launch a new website online with a brand new domain name? You may want to consider registering a deleted domain name instead. Here are some of the benefits to consider from this strategy. Take advantage of previous backlinks Quite a few deleted domain names still have a large number of websites still linking to them even though the site at that domain is offline. By registering that abandoned domain name for yourself , uploading content, and getting it live again, you can take advantage of these ready made backlinks in your quest for higher search engine rankings. Get traffic to your site from day one! When you register a deleted domain name, you can sometimes get traffic that was going to the old site at that domain name right from the day one of being online. This traffic will come from the backlinks, possibly some search engines that still have old pages ranked, and some people who had the domain bookmarked in their favorites and come back weeks or months later. Do your research though There can be potential problems with deleted domain names that is too involved to go in here. One thing I would suggest though is to do your due diligence and make sure that the deleted domain name will suit your purposes. Registering deleted domain names is only one of many strategies out there to boost traffic to new websites. Some people will register a large number of the best deleted domain names they can find, slap a few articles on it then wait and watch to see which ones 'stick'. Others will carefully research the deleted domains and only choose ones that have a completely clean past. Whatever you do, choose a domain that is focused on your main keyword and topic. Registering a domain with the keyword 'healthinsurance' for a free...