How To Choose a Domain Name

finding a good internet name is a little harder that what most folks think. I want to start a website and I am going through some ideas of what I would like name the website. hmmmm... ?Microsoft?, ?the best web hosting company around? and ?Myspace?. wait these names are taken. but it would be nice since everyone has heard about them all ready.

Choosing a domain name is down right tough. Everybody has all the good ones, the name has to be more unique since the good names are already taken. As a new website owner these issues and others are some of the major hurdles that we have to contemplate when looking for that perfect website name.

I wanted to put together a really rough rule of the net to help decide how to pick your next domain name.What is a domain name? a domain name is a legally registered entity that you own the rights too. A domain name is listed with domain name registrars like: InterNic, enom, and others.

Once they are list ed with registrars then the names are introduced to the world wide web or the Internet through a Domain name service or server provider which makes it possible to look up a name by it's FQDN (fully qualified domain name) or IP address. Keep in mind that a URL( Universal Resource Locator) is not a FQDM, A URL is a FQDM with a little help in the translation department or a ?WWW? added to it. Not to digress to much but now folks are starting to use the ?WWW? as part of the domain name. For example ?http://www6.comcast.net? or the ?www6.comcast.net? is a fully qualified domain name and it is registered with the local domain name servers to use ?www6.comcast.net?. OK enough about what is a domain name. If you want to find out more about domain names and the naming conventions you can check here for the definitive of DNS and the story.

Here are some simple rules about creating a domain name. they are not hard fast rules just something to make you think.

Always try for a TLD( top level domain)

If you are a business and you want to be compared with other businesses who are doing the same type of business use a ?.com? or If you are a individual who is looking to show pictures of last week trip snowboarding at Snoqualime Pass then you would try for ?.net?. Familiarity is the name of the game and with the familiar ?buzz? words ?.com? ranks right at the top. .com is traditionally related to business and .net is related to Internet sites.

Don't include extra spaces or too many characters.

The exact number is not really decided as to being too long or too many characters but the longer the name the more the person has to type and potentially misspell. www.abc.com is easier to recognize and reuse. www.washingtoncommunitesonline.com is a nightmare as a online name since it is easily confused with other sites and the spelling can be wrong but still have meaning. quick test as fast as you can type in www.abc.com and then try typing www.washingtoncommuntiesonline.com. Measure the time it takes to type and compare them and if also see if you misspell the big long name. If you made a mistake then you know that others will too.

Don't use any non alphanumeric characters.

Domains that have characters the are not alphanumeric can be misspelled or the placement of the non alphanumeric characters will cause confusion. you can always have domain pointers redirect to you site with the domain name with the non chars in the domain name. for example its is easier to look up www.tcslimited.com but that name is taken all ready. so the next best name is "www.tcs-limited.com". With the hyphen included. The site is listed in all the top search engine but it is confused by other websites that don't have the hyphen. Since search engines are keyed in on alpha characters the hyphen is going to be a limiter to a successful SEO plan.

This is just a start to what it will take to make a sucessful website, we will expanding on the content for this webpage keep checking back or you can go to the contact us page and request more information