Nine Rules for Choosing a Good Domain Name

People often ask, “What makes a good domain name?” To be quite frank, to some degree, it's a subjective issue. However, if you follow these nine rules, you’re sure to come up with a winner.

1). Stay Within The 13 Character Rule

Your domain name should have no more than 13 characters. This makes remembering your URL and writing it down a simple affair. Anything over this limit and you must employ the next two rules.

2). Domain Names With 13 or More Characters MUST Be Memorable

If your domain name has over 13 characters, it MUST be easy to remember.

Here are some domain names that have over 13 characters, but because they are easy to remember, the 13 character rule does not apply:

(a)   Taxrefundexperts.com

(b)   RushMyHomeLoan.com

(c)   Graphicdesigngurus.com

(d)   Safesexexperts.com

If you heard any of these domain names announced over the radio or on TV, you wouldn’t have a problem remembering any one of them. That’s the mark of a good domain name!

3). A Domain Name Should Not Be Over 22 Characters

Once a domain name goes over 21 characters, it becomes a pain to remember and jot down. If people feel like that are typing a book just bring up your URL, they won’t refer their friends and they most assuredly won’t be coming back for revisits. Good domain names are easily remembered and easily typed. The only exception to this rule is if you are using the domain name solely for online marketing and it falls into the next rule.

4). Your Domain Name Should Be Keyword Rich

To be keyword rich means that any search engine can crawl your website and know what the subject matter is. For example, www.YouBuildWebsites.com is unmistakably a website geared towards building websites. This is extremely important if you are using any one of the income generating advertising programs such as Adsense, Adbrite, Yahoo Search, etc. Let’s say that you are involved in selling investment information and your domain name is www.cashgenerators.com. No matter how many keywords you place on your website, the search engines are going to believe the website is related to generators. Which means that most or all of the ads appearing on your website will be related to generators and not investments.

5). Your Domain Should Be Brandable

If your domain name is not keyword rich, then it should be Brandable. Here’s what I mean, If I say McDonald’s, everyone assumes I talking about hamburgers. If I say Youtube, everyone knows I’m talking about the online video giant. If I say MySpace, it’s obvious that I’m talking about the ever popular social networking website. Creating a Brandable domain name, one that instantaneously rings with online surfers immediately propels you above your competitors.

6). Stay Away From Tough To Spell Words and Names

Never use words or names that are tough to spell. This will surely be the end of your website traffic. When a website is advertised on radio, television, in a newspaper or other offline means, you only have a few seconds to make a lasting impression. If you have a hard to spell domain name, all of your advertising efforts will have been wasted.

7). Avoid Hyphenated Names

Imagine being on the radio and telling the listeners to go to your website, www.own-miami-realestate.com. People would hear, go to: www dot own hyphenated Miami hyphenated real estate dot com. That is a mouthful most people are going to soon forget no matter how many times it’s repeated.

8). Use The Plural Form If It Seems More Natural

Let’s say that you have a lawn business, your domain name should be “Fabulouslawns.com” instead of “Fabulouslawn.com? When typing in domain name into the address bar, most people are going to gravitate to what’s normally and naturally acceptable.

9). Stick With Dot Com Domain Names If At All Possible

Ten years from now, this rule will not apply simply because of the growth of the Internet, but right now when most people type in a domain name for the first time, they usually type in dot com without even thinking about it. If the dot com version is not available, you may want to consider creating a Brandable dot com name, If you choose to go with .net. .org. or .info, just remember, you might be unwittingly sending traffic to the dot.com version.

Stick with these rules and you’re sure to come up with a great domain name!