How to Choose a Domain Name..

Do you want to start a Website? The first step is to choose a domain name. Whether you are a Programmer, Web Developer, Tech Guy, or if you want to start up a website to feature your family tree, the entire process starts with choosing a domain name.

The next question would be, “What’s the right domain name?”. The answer is, depends. For example, if you are the person above who wants to build a website for your family tree, then the answer is that the choice of a domain name really doesn’t matter. Why? Because you don’t expect lots of people to visit your website, your site is probably only something you are going to share with your relatives and friends, to let them know about the latest goings in your family. In a case like this, it does not matter whatsoever if you find a domain name like “ourfamilytree.com” or not, since most likely you will only be giving out the website address to a few friends and relatives.

In the above example, you could call the website anything you wanted to, “familytree.com” or even “saripallifamily.com” or something even as silly as “checkmysite.com”, which really has nothing at all to do with the content of the website itself. The point is that in a case is, there is no need to get lot of visitors to the website other than friends and relatives, so there is no real harm in naming the website ANYTHING, because you will be giving out the website address to a select few people. BUT……

What if the website is for online business? What if I do want it to attract more people?

I think you know the answer; it helps to have a domain name that mirrors your site or business. If your website is about dog care products for example, do you really expect the average web surfer to remember the URL if it is named “buntyaurbubly.com” or some other unrelated name? The best way is to find a domain name that directly mirrors your business, whether it is the business name itself or related to the nature of business. If you take the above example, a dog care products website should have a domain name like dogcare.com or dogcareproducts.com, something that immediately mirrors the domain name with the theme of the site. It’s all about branding, and making a lasting impression on the target audience or customers.

You can find domain names by checking the WhoIs database on the internet. While there are a number of places to do domain registration on the internet, I am listing three of which I have personally used.
1. www.godaddy.com
2. http://hosting.rediff.com
3. www.networksolutions.com

You can buy domain names from any of the above 3 links. After searching the domain name, the results given will instantly show whether or not the domain name is available, and if so, give you the option to immediately register it. If not, several alternative domain names will be proposed, to help you find a domain name which would be close to your requested domain, or possibly giving you an acceptable alternative domain name to register instead.

Alternative there are sites which would offer you free domain names and/or free domains and/or free websites and/or free domain registrations…etc. All such sites would provide you a domain name for free but would place their Advertisements on your website and earn money from those ads. If your website is a personal website and you don’t plan to do business or make money with your website you can always go with such sites.

1. http://www.dot.tk
2. www.freedomain.co.nr

You can’t register free top level domain names like .com, .org etc but your can register yourwebsitename.tk.

In my next blog, I will discuss strategies for choosing a domain name, long or short, hyphenated or not, and generic or brand names.