Domain Name Do's And Don'ts

By Author: Carolyn Clayton
Total Articles: 174
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Domain names are classed as the building blocks of the internet. Having the right domain name is key to your site. It is also important to name your site the same as your domain name. The simple reason behind this is that people will remember your site by its domain name, not by its URL.

Domain names can be of any length up to 67 characters, however the shorter the domain name the easier it is for your site to be remembered and the less susceptible it will be to people making mistakes when typing it in to their internet browser.

However it is proving more difficult to get short domain names now as most have already been taken. As well as avoiding long domain names you should also avoid the use of hyphenated names. There are several reasons why hyphenated names should be avoided as domain names that are hyphenated are difficult to remember and hard to type. If someone recommends your site to another person they will only remember the words used, not the fact it is hyphenated so that person would then search for your site based on the words and end up at another site, which could possibly be your competitor.

If ...
... you are in the business of selling pens you can rest assure that the domain name pens.com has already been taken. You have to be imaginative when it comes to choosing your domain name. If you are selling pens why not try the domain name pensworld.com or worldofpens.com. You should always make sure that your key word, i.e. the item you are selling is featured in your domain name this way if someone search's for your site via a search engine, such as Google, msn or yahoo, your site has more of a chance of showing up.

As well as featuring your keyword in your domain name it is important to remember that the more your keyword appears in the text on your site, the more of a chance your site has of being listed in search engine results. Being listed in search engine results means that your site has more of a chance of people choosing to buy off you as oppose to your competitors.

If your website is focused on providing an accident claim service then the keywords that you need to include throughout the text on your site are things such as accidents, claims, personal injury, no win no fee and compensation. By including a range of keywords throughout your site you are increasing your search engine ranking and your site will have more of a chance of appearing on several different search engine results.

Another aspect that has to be taken into consideration when deciding on your domain name is whether you are going to have a dot com or a dot co dot UK. The answer to this really lies with whether you want international business branding or just UK business branding. If you want to focus your business internationally then a dot com domain will work best for you as you can appeal to a global market. However if you want UK business branding then a dot co dot UK will work best.

If you are hoping to register a domain then hurry or your idea will be snapped up by someone else and all the good domain names will be taken.