What To Consider When Choosing Domain Names

When selecting a domain name there are a lot of things to consider, firstly it needs to either reflect the business brand name that you which are known for or intend to develop or alternatively tells people what your website is about with keywords included.

It is also important that the selected name is memorable and one that people are not going to make mistakes on, a good test of this before you go ahead is to verbally tell a few people the name and ask them to write it down, if any of them make a mistake with the spelling you might want to consider an easier name. Do the opposite too, write the name down by hand and ask people to read it, if they mistake a "5" for an "S" for example because it is not clear from the domain name which it should be then think again.

Try and keep the name you choose short, longer names are harder to remember, and again easier to make errors with or type incorrectly. If you really want a particular domain name, but you know that people will sometimes get it wrong then you might want to buy the domain names for likely mistakes as well and then forward those to your website.

Target the domain to the countries you wish to promote the site to, for example if you are only doing business mainly in the UK then a .co.uk is good, globally you may prefer a .com. I don't personally think much of .info or .net names as firstly it doesn't make it look like you have the main domain and secondly people are very likely to forget the extension and mistakenly put .com or their country extension.

Once you have got your domain name you can actually use Google Webmaster to check which country Google (and therefore probably many of the other search engines too) believe your domain is relevant to. If they have got it wrong, there is the chance on there to tell them the country you want it to be.

Where you buy your domain names from as well can be a challenge, as it is a very competitive market. However, as well as looking for low cost, it is important to check with the domain hosting company that they include the ability to forward your domain (you may not need it now, but you might in the future and you don't want to have to change host and the downtime that may mean just to set up a domain forwarding), give you the option to add email addresses and sub-domains as part of the package. I've always preferred to get domains from the company who will actually be hosting it, keeps everything simple and often the web hosting company will give a discount on the name or the hosting when you buy them as a combination, or might even give the domain name for free of charge.

Article by Roy Strong of Strong Marketing Ltd

http://www.strong-marketing.co.uk

About The Author Roy Strong is Managing Director of Strong Marketing Ltd. Roy has over twenty years marketing experience, specialising in Internet Marketing and Network Marketing. On his website you will discover more info about choosing a domain and where to buy domains at low prices. http://www.strong-marketing.co.uk