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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... Domain Names 101 Somehow you've found your way to the internet, and if you're reading this article, then you are one step closer to registering your first domain name. Whether you're looking to register a name for a personal blog, or for your online business, the right domain name can mean the difference between success and failure. Once you are familiar with the basics, you will feel confident enough to make a sensible decision, and find the best domain name solution for your specific needs. What is a domain name? The best way to understand the concept of a domain name is to think of it as a mask, or the alphanumeric equivalent of an ip address. This mask allows you to access web pages on the internet in an easy to remember way. For example the domain name for this site is www.DomainBash.com . That is a lot easier to remember than something that looks like 24.195.85.161, which is what the ip address that the domain name is masking. Your domain name will essentially become your online identity, and how your visitors will be able to find your website in the endless sea of sites that is the web. Understanding the parts Now that you have a basic understanding of what a domain name is, you are ready to understand the individual parts of the domain name. Again we will use www.domainbash.com for our example. The www stands for “world wide web” which encompasses all things accessible on the internet. The second part, which is the part where some minor creativity will help, is the domain name – in our example, this would be domainbash. This, more often times than not, is also the name of your website, or business. Last, we have the TLD – Top Level Domain, or the extension. There are various extensions available for your consideration. TLDs In Depth TLDs can be further broken down...