Tip #1: Always use your business name as the domain name. Your visitors should have only one name to remember your business - be it your business or your domain name.

Tip #2: Your domain name should be short and/or easy to remember. The limit is 67 characters. Domain names that are short and easy to remember names make it easier for your visitors to visit you repeatedly.

Tip #3: In addition to Tip #2, avoid using more than 4 words in your domain name. For example, avoid www.getyourbestcomputerdeals.com (http://www.getyourbestcomputerdeals.com). It is both difficult to remember and type. Having said so, it is increasing difficult to buy short domain names.

Tip #4: On top of registering a domain using your business name, register another domain name that is related to your business sector: For example, register www.dell.com (http://www.dell.com) and register www.computers.com (http://www.computers.com). You can point both domain names to the same website. Use popular keywords when you do this.

Tip #5: If you have a domain name that is easily misspelled, you should also register the misspelled domain name. Why would you want to do this? Simple, your visitor will still get to you when they misspelled your domain name.

Tip #6: If you need to use abbreviations, use only those that made sense and/or easy to remember. For example, instead of using www.instituteofmentalhealth.com (http://www.instituteofmentalhealth.com), it might be easier to use www.imh.com (http://www.imh.com).

Tip #7: Avoid using hyphenated domain names. The advantage of hyphenated domain names is that it is easier to spot when printed. For example: www.institute-of-mental-health.com (http://www.institute-of-mental-health.com) is easier to read as compared to www.instituteofmentalhealth.com (http://www.instituteofmentalhealth.com). The downside is when the domain name is communicated verbally. To really make sure the person you talk to get to your website, you have to pronounce it as "www dot institute hyphen of hyphen mental hyphen health dot com" as compared to pronouncing it "www dot institute of mental health dot com". It is such a pain.

Tip #8: Avoid using "to" or "for" in your domain name. It can be confusing as your visitors may type "2" or "4" instead.

Tip #9: Avoid using numbers in your domain name. Similar to Tip #6, your visitors may type in the number in full instead of using the numeric key.

Moved to domain name tutorials

nicely written, i will add a link to this in my newsletter as it is helpful to the type of people that i work with

You could add to tip #8 to buy both number and words to avoid confusion if or for is in the domain

hmm or..the easiest way..there are applications for this sorta things..write two words and it'll give ya a domain name. that's easiest..never used it.. lol

nice tool to find web 2 suitable names
http://www.lightsphere.com/dev/web20.html


best regards

Very nice tips may i add, and yes i agree with tip 8 and 9 i have seen many sites lose visitors like that a example would be youtube, they kind of got sued by utube to changed their domain name so many people who want to vist youtube instead type in utube

Tip #9: Avoid using numbers in your domain name. Similar to Tip #6, your visitors may type in the number in full instead of using the numeric key.

I totally agree with this - But I'd say its fine if you get both the letter and number domain. For example, I own slip7.com, slip7.net, slipseven.com, and slipseven.net.

Fact or Myth? I have heard that if you register for more then one year it can give you a better search ranking?

this is a nice one. But there are so may tuts who say that their way is the best. So you should find your own way.

regards

Thank you for the 9 Tips, if I would have had them when I started in this business, I maybe could have avoided a few REG disasters. Thank you for the tips.

JeremyBain

Interesting comments and suggestions, either way thank you.

1. Check first, if your business name is available. There are business name registers for each county, in some states it is state wide. Do not register a company under a name confusingly similar to somebody else's company.

2. Check TESS, the trademark search engine. Businesses increasingly force private people to give up domain names that use their trademarks. This has been introduced to protect the trademark rights of businesses.

3. Google your name, and see if someone is already running a business with a confusingly similar name.

Excellent tips and topic. As a domainer and internet marketer it STILL blos me away how many good domain names are still available, and I am talking about TLDs, not crap.

I was amazed in my area how many realtors didn't have the name of our town along with prime keywords such as condos, apartments, etc.

That is a good hint for you guys who want to snap up some cash. I bought 20 in my area and charge the realtors for ad space!

Gregg

When there are not free domain name we must miss some of your tips.
Then we try to find similar domain name with some number on name or hyphenated.

Excellent tips and topic. As a domainer and internet marketer it STILL blos me away how many good domain names are still available, and I am talking about TLDs, not crap.

I was amazed in my area how many realtors didn't have the name of our town along with prime keywords such as condos, apartments, etc.

That is a good hint for you guys who want to snap up some cash. I bought 20 in my area and charge the realtors for ad space!

Gregg

That's a good tip Gregg. There's two type of domaining going on and that is "LOCAL" and "MOBILE". Local communities will want local information and this is where you can make good money by slapping on adsense and use it as virtual real estate, same with mobile.

Thanks for this :) it actually helped

nicely written,either way thank you.

Ahh some good tips in there, wish I had read this a while ago.

interesting...
may I suggest instead of verbally using hyphen, use the word dash
"I'm at dubya dubya dubya dot my dash site dot com"
no biggie...

I also think it's important if you are registering your business name to google first and see if anyone has a really similar name - if so, I don't think it's worth registering yourbusiness.net if someone else is already using yourbusiness.com or to register your-business.com - they are too close and you run the risk that your customers won't even know if they end up on your competitor's site.

Better to go with a different version of your business name, add a word or two to differentiate between you and your competitor.

Good Tips. Thanks WHT because they lost data and I saw this tips.. Otherwise, I did not noticed before:)

good guide

this si good info thanks

Thanks that is great info.

nice tool to find web 2 suitable names
http://www.lightsphere.com/dev/web20.html

Interesting and useful tool. Another domain suggestion tool I recommend is http://DomainWhiz.net, which has made my day a lot easier.

Excellent tips and topic. As a domainer and internet marketer it STILL blos me away how many good domain names are still available, and I am talking about TLDs, not crap.

I was amazed in my area how many realtors didn't have the name of our town along with prime keywords such as condos, apartments, etc.

That is a good hint for you guys who want to snap up some cash. I bought 20 in my area and charge the realtors for ad space!

Gregg

This is a great idea, I never really thought about that approach.

Thanks for the tutorial

Good tips...

Also try to find a domain that have a keyword related to your business nature. The first thing a SE bot looks for is its domain name.

Nice tut

The com domain is best

Thank you Mikey

Sedo.com has a great search tool that tells you if it has been registered yet and if it is for sale or not.

What if host.com is taken and parked, will host.net be a excellent choice?

nice tips but this is very hard to faind a domain name with a good keywords

Nice share of guidelines on what to avoid and must do to come up with a good domain name :) I will use and study well these tips because I will make a site by next year. Thank you :)

Nice ideas! Thank you for your share!

I agree that anyone shall register their "business name as the domain name".

This "Your domain name should be short and/or easy to remember. The limit is 67 characters". is correct but it actually does not matter how long is the address. If anyone advertises their domain heavily and if the website is well-optimized, every thing is fine

This - "avoid using more than 4 words in your domain name" - is a good advise. Let's not make people wasting a lot of time typing our web addresses ;).

This one - "register another domain name that is related to your business sector" - is a very good advize and many people who re not familiar with the web strategies shall be grateful.

Another good piece of advise- "If you have a domain name that is easily misspelled, you should also register the misspelled domain name".

I will only add that that the way anyone promotes the website under the domain name is much more important!

how about tip #10 - buy the domain with all the popular TLDs. i have a .co.uk and someone bought the .com a year later. they get type ins now from my brand.

Excellent additional advice there HostColor. I completely agree with the easily misspelled business names. I think google has done that for gogle, googel and other wrong spelling.

Thanks for the tips, and

how about tip #10 - buy the domain with all the popular TLDs. i have a .co.uk and someone bought the .com a year later. they get type ins now from my brand.

tip #10 - try 2 buy the domain .com

:D

Nice tutorial. I am sure that this will be great helpful for newbies.

Thanks for the tips! Definitely helpful! :)

Tip #1: Always use your business name as the domain name. Your visitors should have only one name to remember your business - be it your business or your domain name.



I agree with all the other tips. But what if my company name is such that is not that easy to spell out and remembered?? :(

This is not anything in general i am talking about but the case which i am handling.

Also keeping a keyword in domain name is better than using your company name. This helps you to get website optimized quickly...

What do you say WHT members??

Tip #5 is great. I believe this can save from some people not remembering your business for example if your name is servershosting.com you could register serverhosting.com and foward it to your domain

Nice tips, i will remember them when i choose a domain.

Very hard to find a good domain name nowadays

It's obviously a myth! Domain name registrars don't regulate Google!

Totally agree, if that was the case it would make no sense...every body would register for like 10 years and more

Very interesting, though there are still many good domains to be taken, and so for tip three, i'd say look for one or two words max, as you'll have the best results.

A good site to find domains is http://bustaname.com (domain name generator and WHOIS lookup tool)

Thanks man, Picking a domain can be hard if you don't know what you're doing. Must have wasted a lot when I got started in trying to flip domains. Great tips though.

Also a domain is very important for any business or website as you mentioned you should be trying to find keyword rich domains, something with your business name, and something easy and memorable.

One more to add, regarding SEO. Short TLD's and ccTLD's that describes a common service or product are hard to find. Instead, If you can find internationalized domain names that are the same as top competetive phrase in your industry or business you can drive a lot of traffic to your site (with a little bit of SEO work- Good IDN names cannot stand for themselfs with high ranked pages and sites, not for a long time actualy.)

A great tutorial for a starter . Thanks for sharing

wow! its a great tips. it will really help us to register a company website.

thanks

Very well written, I'll be telling people thinking about domain names to check this post out!

Thanks for the tips. I struggle with this constantly.

One of the things that you can do is pick a nonsense name - might bear no relation to the company / business - like zalando for instance, they sell shoes and clothes, but came up with a business name and thus domain name that is ultimately meaningless, but nevertheless stays in people's heads.

Its now really hard to find desired domain names, so we must neglect some of your tips.

As IdenTT said above it is really hard to find good domain names with .com now. GoDaddy even for a short period put .co as the default domain on it's site. I think .co is the new .com

As IdenTT said above it is really hard to find good domain names with .com now. GoDaddy even for a short period put .co as the default domain on it's site. I think .co is the new .com

I prefer other IDNs than this Columbian TLD as it became more common among other ccTLDs. I prefer my domain to look as a unique when compared to other's generic or well known TLDs

Some experts warn about the SEO effect on IDNs. But I still like using them to give my site a short name and spacial look

Thanks!

Good, i.e. is very nice tips, I will also say to go for .Com's instead of other domain.

Excellent tips it is very helpful
Thanks

thanks for sharing this...very usefull for beginners like me

yes, you are right. I also tried this and benefited.

thanks for sharing this...very usefull for beginners like me

That works

Didn't know the Tip7, thanks for sharing!

Very interesting, though there are still many good domains to be taken, and so for tip three, i'd say look for one or two words max, as you'll have the best results (http://www.zanlando.co.uk).

A good site to find domains is http://bustaname.com (domain name generator and WHOIS lookup tool)

Thanks for the advice, I got really stuck when it came to choosing a domain name!

Some useful tips to bear in mind thanks

Thanks for providing the information about choosing a domain name. I will use these tips.

Very good tips to keep in mind.

Another one for me would be: Use the correct TLD, which is fit-for-purpose.

e.g. If your company is based in the UK, and the target market is in the UK, using a .co.uk TLD makes sense.
What wouldn't make sense, is if a charity used .com, or a company used .org.

Great tips!

One should also remember that if your business name is more than one word the domain can give off false signals.

The classic is of course the www.speedofart.com , which is not a swimwear funny site, but the home page for grafic designers Speed of Art ...

I think it is better to choose the main keywords with your business name as domain name.someone said it will be easier to get a better SERP like this.You post is really meaningful to the beginners.

Is it safe to assume that if you stumble upon a free domain name that seems to be one that SHOULDVE been taken a long time ago that it will probably sell for a lot?