Tips For Creating Your Perfect Domain Name
Most people have a really tough time finding the domain name they want. Domain name speculators and website spammers have used up or registered a lot of the really good domain names. The search for short domain names is getting tougher every single day. You have to be more and more creative to get those last good domains so the best time to start is now.
So how do you find a good domain? I hate saying it but you have to think outside the box! If you've never heard that term before it simply means thinking in a lateral way - thinking past the obvious choices for domains. This is where you'll have the most success in finding a short and catchy domain name and one that will brand your business properly and provide you with excellent online "visbility".
You can choose to go for a keyword based domain name or brand your business with an alternative domain name. What does this mean? Well imagine if you were setting up a website to sell books online what type of domain would you choose? Most people would probably choose BuyBooksOnline.com or something similar. Makes sense right? Who's the biggest retailer of books online right now? That's right Amazon.com. That's keyword based domains versus branding and it works really well. Building a brand for yourself is just as important as focusing on keywords in your domain name if not more so.
Example
Let's take the example of somebody who wants to build a website about scented candles. Your first step is to try the normal and hyphenated version of the domain so you'd have
www.scentedcandles.com or www.scented-candles.com
You probably won't have much luck there. On top of this using hyphenated domains may now cause you trouble in the search engines. So let's try to stay away from hyphenated domain names as much as is possible; ideally not using a hyphen in your domain at all.
What about the singular version of the name:
www.scentedcandle.com
Still not having any luck? Ok let's take it a step further. Let's try adding extra words to the domain to find matches and mix things up a little bit.
How about some of these:
www.scentedcandlesguide.com
www.scentedcandlesonline.com
www.scentedwax.com
www.candlecentral.com
www.aboutscentedcandles.com
www.aromacandles.com
www.candlearomas.com
Endings
Now if you add into the mix that you can try .net,.org,.biz,.info,.us,.tv etc. Your domain choices just increased one hundred fold.
What I'd suggest is this. Open up a notepad document and type down all your domain brainstorming ideas. Use a Thesaurus for extra inspiration if you like. Then go to your domain registrar and copy and paste the whole lot into its bulk search box on the main page. This means you can check hundreds of possible domain choices in a few moments instead of spending hours typing them in manually. This is a very, very useful tip.
So as you can see if you allow your creativity to get involved you can still create some really great domains. Use synonyms, think of related topics and words. Jot your ideas down on paper. Ask friends for ideas. A buddy of mine runs a website about credit cards. He called it www.crediteria.com.... now that's clever ain't it? He didn't go for the obvious choices - he thought "outside the box".
One final note. When registering a domain it's recommended that you now register for 2 - 5 years in advance. Why? Well search engines are now placing a bit more weight on the age of a domain name because search engine spammers have been buying up thousands of domains names and filling the search engines with junk sites that serve no purpose. Registering your domain for 5 years will only cost about $45 so it's not a massive investment. Something else to consider is that if you find a truly great domain name (branded or otherwise) it might be an idea to register the .net, .org and .info variants of the domain.
Why? To stop copycats in your industry setting up competing websites and hoping that some people will mistake their junk website for your high quality one - this happens quite a bit.
If you find yourself struggling to find a great domain name then you could consider using a domain name suggestion tool to speed the process up for you!