Choosing your domain name

A very important part of setting up a website for a business is choosing the domain name. But choosing the right domain name can be quite a process. This article discusses choosing your domain name.

Domain name rules

There are a few rules that a person should keep in mind when they are choosing their domain name. For example, domain names can be up to 67 characters long. Characters that can be used in domain names include the numbers zero through nine, all of the 26 letters that are in the English alphabet, and hyphens. Even though the domain name can include more than one hyphen it cannot begin or end with a hyphen.
A domain name needs to have a suffix. These are sometimes referred to as Top Level Domain or TLD. The suffix can let people know what type of organization a site is associated with. Common suffixes include .com, .net, .org, .edu, and .gov. .Com suffixes are used for commercial business domain and .net suffixes are used for commercial networks.

Ideas to choose a good domain name

Of course a domain name needs to be unique. A domain name needs to be something memorable enough so that people can remember it to research and use the business, but it also needs to be simple enough so that people are able to find it easily.
Even though a domain name can contain up to 67 characters, many times it is a good idea to keep it as short as possibly while still being creative. When a domain name is too long people may more easily forget it and they could tend to misspell it more often. However, sometimes a longer domain name can be remembered more easily if it has to do with the business and if it has a good ring to it. It is also a good idea for a person to use at least three characters in their domain name.
How to do it
For a person to choose a great domain name for their website, they should first take some time to brainstorm some ideas for a domain name. A person can do this by making a list of words that relate to their business or that go along with the domain name they would prefer but that is already being used by someone else. They can also list a lot of words that may have to do with the content of their website or about their business in general.
Once a person has a long list of words they should pick out the words in their list that are memorable, short, hard to confuse, difficult to misspell, related to their business, and that may have a good should relating to the business. Then they can begin to make different word combinations with the words they have picked from their longer list of words.
From the combinations that they have put together, a person should then choose the combinations they like best. Because many domain names are already in use, a person should think of more than one form of the word or words that they really want to have in their domain name.
The next step is for the person to actually search for the availability of the domain names they have come up with. If none of the domain names they have come up with are available then a person could think about using hyphens.
Hyphens in a domain name have advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes hyphens can be hard to remember and a person my not type them in and then end up at the competitor's website. But hyphens can give a person the opportunity to have the domain name that they really want and many search engines are able to pick up on the key words in a hyphenated domain name easier.