Choose the right domain name

Choosing a domain name for a website is becoming harder and harder. It’s no longer a simple case of browsing to your chosen registrar and registering a company name with a .com or .co.uk ending. Many of the best domains are taken, so coming up with something new and memorable is a struggle, but it’s not impossible.

When you think of a name, try it in your browser (or use the lookup above this article). If it resolves to a site or holding page, move on.

Rule #1 keep it short. Just about every single-word name you can think of will already be taken, many of them by cyber squatters looking for a big pay day. Try unique word combinations, plurals and puns. For example, GREENAPPLES.com is taken , but CRAEDAPPLES and ZAPPEDAPPLES are still available.

Your name doesn’t have to be description of your site – take JSWEB as an example – there are plenty of success brands that aren’t. Domain names that try too hard to pack in keywords and be descriptive run the risk of sounding cheap. Which site would you return to: discountdvdsupercentre.com or dvdnow.com ?

Above all, the name should be intuitive. If your URL is www.crackedapples.com, your site shold be called Cracked Apples. That’s the first think anyone will try in a browser when looking for you. As for hyphenated names, these are fin if you also own the non-hyphenated version of a name.

Finally, write down your domain on a sample business card, letter headed paper – does it look straight forward to read? You may have a website with a url that sounds great, but it must be readable by your audience for them to remember.

So in summary, some domains can be GREAT and some, well can be difficult to type, a pest to remember and a pain to describe verbally.

Thanks to Karl Hodge (.net magazine for these tips)

How much does a domain's age affect its ranking?

• This video from the GoogleWebmasterHelp Team explains more about domain names age and sure sounds like google's answer to everything is "don't worry about this, just focus on producing good content".

JSWeb Summary:

Although Matt Cutts disputes this in his video, Google makes hundreds of changes each year to their algorithms, and aged domains seems to be one of them. In 2009 I've found that the age of the domain is playing a more and more important part in the ranking of a website. In fact, domains less than a year old will struggle in the Google rankings but not in Yahoo and MSN. If your domain is less than a year I advise you to optimise for 5 keywords only that are not overly competitive but yet bring in plenty of good traffic. Also, when you buy your domain, even if you don't yet have a site built, put up a 'page under construction' and either link to that page from another site or submit to Google. By doing this by the time your website is built you would have already aged your website.