At the moment I'm searching for a domain name for a website.
What criteria do you use to judge the quality of a name?
How do you go about finding a good name?
9 answers
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When selecting domain names I generally try to achieve as many of the points below as possible.
- Use a .com unless another TLD is more appropriate.
- Use common words that people won't have trouble spelling.
- Make sure that the name describes the content of the website.
- Keep the name short.
- Make sure the name is pronouncable.
- Try to make the name memorable, with a little cognitive "punch."
- If people are likely to search for your website's content, try to include their search terms.
Depending on the type of website you're creating, the rules may be more or less important. For instance, if the website is targeted at web designers, you can probably get away with a more exotic TLD like .us or .info.
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- Two words or less Your Domain Name
- Should Be Your Website Name
- TLD [Top level domain (No .co.cc, .de.tk, etc.)]
- Memorable
- Somewhat Generic
- Descriptive
- Short
- If possible, domain hack, small domain hack, like http://blo.gs
- Pronouncable (Like youtube, not like compsci.ca)
- Unique (Tumblr, Meebo, eBuddy)
A beautiful example of this would be Tumblr.com. Tumblr is only one word and it is also the name of the actual website. It is a top level domain, with only a ".com". Also, its moderately generic, yet descriptive. It uses the word "tumblr", which can me interpreted to "Tumbler", then "Tumblogs". It is quite short, but it is not a domain hack. Therefor the only way to better the domain would be to use tumb.lr (.lr is extension for Liberia)
I hope this answers your question
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SEO benefits are not worth butchering your domain name. Some would argue that they don't even count enough to... uhm... count anymore.
One key for a business is this: Can I tell you my domain and when you get home you can get to it? I can say ford.com or freecreditreport.com and you can find it on your own just by hearing it. If I said Get-your-free-widgets.nv could you ever find it without reading it? Probably not.
If it will be advertised verbally you don't want to say certain things like hyphen (dash) or end in something unexpected they may tune out and assume is .com. Also, if you go with something other than .com, see what is at yourdomainname.com just to see if it will be a competitor or something else that's hurtful to your success.
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I usually have some ideas of what I want to call it, and then have a play on http://domai.nr/
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If it's a personal site, consider registering .name domain - they're cheaper, there's more options, and (i my humble opinion) they are memorable.
If it's a commercial site or similar, I'd just make sure that there's no competitors or embarrassing content on domains with similar names. If the name is long or has potential for misspelling, I like to register a few variants as well and simply redirect from all to the one preferred. I generally prefer some keywords appended to the end of the name over dashes if nothing sensible is available, but it really depends a lot of the kind of site and its content...
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A point to bear in mind is that using your keywords in your domain name will help with search engine optimisation - better to have a domain name that reflects what you do than one that matches your brand or company name (unless you're a big well known brand.)
- The minuscule benefit would have to be weighed against a horrific name. I would not even consider SEO for domain names since the benefit is so small. Good point about naming what you do rather than who you are though.
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I think Tony has a point, though sometimes the brand image your're creating can far out way forcing in keywords, at the cost of a unique domain. Don't be scared to go with a non-standard domain extension either :)
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Also take a look at the domain name all run-together to look for unintentional words that will leap out when you stick two words right next to each other. Like this.
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I don’t know if Google has changed, but I read a couple of years ago that they give SEO juice to hyphen-separated keywords in a URL, but not when there’s no separator. That means if you want a multi-word domain name use hyphens between the words. You’d also want to register the non-hyphenated version and redirect to the hyphenated version.
Another thing that hasn’t been mentioned is to be careful of US and British English spelling differences. Again get both variants and redirect to the primary one.
