Advice on Choosing a Domain Name

So, I thought it might be useful to offer advice on choosing a domain name. Don't panic, if after reading, you think you may have made an error with the name you have chosen. These are just suggestions, not rules!

Spelling

The first thing to remember is that you can't change a domain name. I have seen numerous examples, when people have been that excited to have a domain, they didn't check the spelling. It doesn't look professional if you have spelling errors in your domain name.

Trademarks

A worrying trend that I have spotted, is when people are using trademarked names, brand names in their domain. You really can't do this. Big brands are very protective of their name and you could be subject to legal action. Last year, Nike took 20 sites to court for using their name.

Short

Try and pick a short name, preferably 2 or 3 words. Make it memorable and catchy.

.com

Use .com, if possible. If the name you want is not available in .com, then you could be tempted to use the .net or .org version of it. This may not be a good idea. If people are trying to remember the name of your site, they will automatically assume it's a .com, so you could be sending traffic to the site with the original name.

Dashes

The same goes for having dashes/hyphens in the name. If you have added the dashes because the name you want is not on offer, people won't remember the dashes and may go elsewhere. You should also remember that the original owner of the .com may not be too happy with you using essentially the same name.

Keywords

You don't need keywords in your domain name. Google will be ranking your posts in its search pages according to the keyword in your content, not because of the name of your site.

I hope this helps, as it really shouldn't be a stressful experience!