Web Hosting Tips, Choosing A Domain Name

If you’re considering putting a website online, you might have heard that its hard to find domain names that are any good. This might have been true a few years ago when there was a 22 character limit on domain names, but now that the limit is 63 characters there are plenty of good domain names available.

When choosing a domain name, its best to find one that describes your product or service. Your domain name is your online identity. Ideally, your domain name will be eye-catching, but easy to remember.

As the first thing your visitor sees, your domain name gives them their first impressions about you. The last thing you want is your visitor to form a bad first impression. Here are some general Do’s and Don’ts when deciding on a domain name

A domain name should sound professional. While people will be impressed by the value and quality of your product or service, they value professionalism more than anything else. You should choose a domain name that projects quality. Not only will the right domain name show professionalism, but it will help you earn trust and loyalty from your customers.

Get a .com extension, you should always try to obtain a .com extension rather than .net, .org, .biz, etc. The reason is most people will automatically add .com as the extension when they type an internet address. There is nothing wrong with owning other extensions, but if you own a domain with a .net extension without first owning the .com extension, you will lose visitors.

Use keywords in your domain name. If your domain name contains commonly used keywords, you’ll likely get listed higher in the search engines. The search engines send out spider to crawl websites, looking at the site’s keywords to determine how to list the site. Once the search engines list your website in their results, the domain name is considered as part of the ranking. In most cases, domains that contain keywords get ranked higher.

Avoid the use of hyphens unless a phrase naturally uses a hyphen. Domain names that include unnatural hyphens are difficult to remember, resulting in lost visitors that either forget to add the hyphen or don’t know there’s a hyphen in the address.

Don’t misspell. The structure and spelling of your domain name should be perfectly clear. If a visitor hears about your site through word or mouth, they will type the address as it should be spelled. They won’t be able to find your site if they don’t know how to spell it.

Being memorable is crucial. If people can’t remember your domain name you won’t get as much traffic as you need to be successful. When you are choosing a domain name, you have to think about your potential visitors. Write down as many domain names as you can think of and ask yourself if each one would be memorable if you heard about it from a friend. Once you’ve found one that’s memorable, you found the right domain name.

Registering your domain name is quick and easy. The entire process usually only takes about 10 minutes once you’ve found an available name. Your name is your brand, so choose it wisely. The right domain name could mean the difference between success and failure.

Do you want to know more about hosting? If you need more information to make your choice and start your website, visit my blog and read more hosting web tips and articles.