Choosing a Website Domain Name
Second Level Domain Name

 There are some General Guidelines To choosing a Domain Name (opens in new window) which you should be aware of. However for most it comes down to a choice of choosing between:

• A Brandable domain name... like Apple etc
• An existing company or personal domain name.
• A keyword based domain name.

Here we will look at these choices in more detail as well as looking at the use of dashes and underscores, long versus short names and multiple domain names.

Brandable Domain Names

The idea of a branded name is that the name becomes synonymous with the product or service. The name itself may be meaningless (Google, Yahoo) or may even have other meanings (Apple, Macintosh, Apricot, Orange), and may even be an acronym (IBM, UPS),  but because of branding it becomes strongly associated with a particular product or service.

Brandable Domain Names tend to be short and simple. They also tend to be the preserve of the big companies or the small companies that plan on being big. To establish your domain name as a branded domain name requires a huge marketing effort or a lot of luck.

The problem with a branded domain name is that if it doesn't make it, it becomes meaningless. For example:

Image I had a domain name registration company and wanted to use the brand name Lemons. The idea is that when someone saw the name lemons they would not only associate the name with the fruit, but with domain name related services.

 Now imagine someone goes to Google and types in " cheap domain names" and Google returned :

1. www.lemons.com
2. www.cheap-domain-names.com
3. www.best-domain-names.com
4. www.1-domain-names.co.uk

Which one would they click on? I think the answer is obvious.

Another problem with branding, is that, just as a name can become branded it can become unbranded. You may remember the Levi adverts back in the early 80's which effectively re-made Levis and Jeans more or less the same thing again.

Brandable names are something that you have to be very careful about using especially in very competitive markets. If you are thinking along these lines then you may want to consider some professional marketing advice.

An Existing Company or Personal Name

This is a very common choice for offline businesses moving into an Internet presence. If your existing and well established company is called F Smith and Sons then it makes sense to use it for or as part of the domain name. for example you could use the domain names:

• www.LSmith.co.uk
• www.Lsmith-removals.co.uk
• www.Lsmithandsons-removals.co.uk

I think you would agree that, although the second two names are longer, they do convey more meaning to anyone who sees the name for the first time. They are also easy for existing customers to associate with, as they include the  company name, which they are already familiar with.

In fact if you look at many existing businesses they already use this principle. How often have you seen shops/businesses with signs like:

• Jones Plumbing Service
• Bill The Gardener
• Jack Jones and Sons Home Deliveries.

Keyword Based Domain Names

Keyword based domain names are basically names constructed from keywords used to describe your product or service. If your business sold computers, then computer would be a keyword.

Keyword based domain names are probably the most common choice for websites, especially for businesses that operate mainly on the Internet. The idea behind keyword based names is that when someone does a web search they do a search based on keywords.

These keywords describe what they are looking for. Therefore if they see a site with a domain which contains some or all of those keywords they are more likely to click on the link and see if it does.

In essence when you look at a keyword based domain name you should know immediately what the company/website is about. For example when you look at these domain names: www.low-fat-diets.com, www.cheap-domain-names.com, www.build-your-website.co.uk.

 You immediately form an impression on the website associate with that domain name.

Domain Names with Dashes and Underscores

Some search engines will give you a higher ranking if you include your keywords in the Website domain name. That apart if your domain name contains keywords then the searcher instantly sees it as relevant and is more likely to select it form the results.

 So a website like this one on building a website would include the keywords building or build, website etc in the domain name. Following this logic here are some alternative domain names for this site.

1. build-your-website
2. build_your_website
3. buildyourwebsite

I choose number 1... build-your-website because all search engines treat the dashes as spaces and see the name as composing of three distinct words-build, your and Website.

Number 2 would not be seen by all search engines as three distinct words, but would appear to some as one word, as would number 3.

Short or Long Domain Names? Does Size Matter?

There is no doubt that short names tend to be easy to remember. The problem is most are already gone. However long domain names aren't really a problem if you main source of traffic is from search engines, newsletters, email etc. This is because the person never actually types in the domain name, they simply click a link.

If you were running an offline campaign in a newspaper or mailshot and expecting the person to read your website address and then type it into a browser, then the shorter the name the better. Otherwise, I don't see much of a problem with them.

Having said that, still try to keep them as short as possible while still being meaningful.

 Valid Domain Names

To be valid, a domain name must not be larger than 67 characters including the extension (e.g. .com, .net, .org, etc.). Valid characters are 0-9, a-z and the dash "-" . The domain name cannot start or end with a dash and is not case sensitive.

Is One Domain Name Enough?

Sometimes, it is a good idea to register several similar domain names. If you have "JUICE.com", register "JUICE.net", “JUICE.co.uk” so no one else takes it, and to catch customers who try to guess a domain name. Some people even register common misspellings of their name e.g. “JUCE.com”.

Even though it's common for large organizations to do this, it isn't common for small ones. You should also remember that you don't need a separate Website for each domain name as several domain names can point to the same Website.

Now that we have decided on a possible domain name we need to check if the domain name is still available and register the name.