Choosing a domain name is probably one of the toughest decisions to make when making a website.
Here we’ll discuss pros and cons as well as good strategies when picking the perfect name for your site.
Competition
One reason choosing a name is so tough is because it’s not enough to choose the coolest, snappiest name you can think of, or even the most descriptive. Why? Because you are competing with everyone else in the world for domain names! Odds are, if you are choosing a name about a fairly common topic, someone else has thought of some of the same domain names as you.
Alternative domain names
This is where you have to get creative and thoughtful. Are you ok with using a domain other than .com, such as .net, .org, .biz, etc? There are differing schools of thought on this. Some people think you should go with .com at all costs because visitors may not remember your site was .biz. Some also think that people still just try typing in names based on topics. For example, if you wanted to find out about soccer, you’d go to soccer.com and hope it was about pro soccer as opposed to soccer uniforms.
Others say that it really doesn’t matter what domain (or even name) you choose anymore because most web users these days find everything via search engines anyway.
I believe a little bit of both. I believe if you can get a good .com domain, that should be your first choice. This is primarily because most people on the web are familiar with .com. This also matters when using your domain for email as many people assume your domain is .com. This is not a hard and fast rule though! My primary domain is actually a .biz because I wanted my last name to be my domain and .biz was the best available.
Think of email when choosing a domain name
I need to stress the point about email here: If you are choosing a domain that will be your main site and email address, you need to keep it short and easy to spell. If your group is the Jonesville Civic Association, Inc., You should try for a domain like JCAI.com or JonesvilleCivic.com. Do not go with jonesvillecivicassociationinc.com because the odds are high that whoever is trying to type in your web address or email address will make a typo and will never get there.
I also believe your domain name should be as short and descriptive as possible (which is not always possible!). Sometimes you have to choose short OR descriptive, but can’t have both. Take this site as an example. I went with ICanMakeAWebsite.com because there are so many other sites out there with similar names that it was hard to find a shorter name that was appropriate. Also, since my main email address is not using this domain, I don’t worry that people will have to type out a long address to reach me. In this case, I decided to go with descriptive over short. This is where the other school of logic comes in… It doesn’t matter what your domain name is because people will find you via search engines.
Since the content of this site is 100% about building websites and website related topics, the search engines send people here that are looking for this type of information. Once they’re here, they’ll bookmark this site if they find the information useful. Gone are the days in the infancy of the internet when you would just type in domain names as key words and hope the site you got to was what you needed.
Registering a domain name
When registering a domain name you can either go to a dedicated name registrar which has some benefits, but the easiest and fastest way is to go with a web host package that includes a free domain name.
My web host Powweb, gives you a free domain name when you sign up with them. If you are putting up your first website and want to keep the costs down, I would recommend going with them as their hosting is about $7 a month and you get the domain name free. Fear not, even though they are inexpensive, Powweb gives you all the features that more expensive web hosts give you. I have been with them for over five years and am happy.
Whichever route you decide to take, you’ll end up at a search form where you can see if the domain name you are thinking about is available to purchase. Be prepared to try several variations of the name you are thinking of in case your first few choices aren’t available.
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