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The Importance of Buying a Good Domain Name

If you’re going to work online and have an online business, you need a good domain name. A domain name says who you are and what your online business is. It’s like a virtual ID card. It speaks for you and speaks volumes about your business and work.

A lot of people mistakenly think that having just any domain name is okay, or that having a bad domain name is better than not having any domain name at all. They would be wrong.

You want your domain name to look and sound professional. First, you don’t want vulgar words. You don’t want a misspelled domain name (that screams unprofessional). Having a bad domain name can ultimately backfire on you and cause you to lose customers and potential customers. The easy way around this is to buy a good domain name to begin with.

You want your domain name to rank high in the search engines. For this to happen, you want quality content, but you also want a domain name that reflects what your business is about so as to take advantage of the keywords in the domain name. Unless you are a huge company that’s very well branded (or perhaps you’re dreaming big and hope to be so), then the cute brandable names should be a second choice when thinking of a domain name. This isn’t to say don’t buy a brandable domain name (I have a few myself), it simply means think about what your site is going to be about buy accordingly.

Remember that your domain name won’t just be on the web for people to see, but it will be on your business letterheads, your business cards, your envelopes – offline as well as online – and more so if you do a lot of offline business. You want a domain name that touts professionalism and reflects your business in a positive manner.

Now you’re ready to make a list of possible domain names for your siteor sites. If you’ve named your business, you might want to buy the domain name for it. If that’s taken, you might consider changing your business name to a domain name that is available. You might also consider buying the domain name for your name. As for your online business, think of a domain name thaat pertains to what you’re doing or planning on doing. If you plan on selling woodworking plans, look for a domain name that had those words in it. Searching expired domain names (previously owned domains that are available now) can land you a super good domain (or a few).

In general, when buying domain names, you want to hang with a .com extention when possible. The .com extention is the most popular of all the extentions you can buy for a domain name. But the other extentions are okay if you can’t find a good .com domain name extention. Using good keywords and SEO techniques will help your site in the search engines.

While making your domain name list, remember to use a keyword or two for what your site is about. Once you’ve come up with a few ideas, mark out anything that’s too long or too hard to be remembered. You want to stay under 20 characters, preferrably 15 or less. Don’t use numbers, and stay away from hyphens. Also be sure that, when put together, your domain name doesn’t accidently spell out an offensive or vulgar word.

Once you have your domain list, reorder them putting your favorites first. You can check for domain name history by going to the Way Back Machine. Now you’re ready to see if the domain you want is available. There are a lot of places you can buy domain names, but my favorite (that I’ve used for 11 years) is GoDaddy. The process is fairly simple. Once you find a domain name that’s available, add it to the cart and check out. You’re now the proud owner of a domain name!

We’ll cover web hosting and how to set it up in another blog post.

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