| Make it
easy to spell! Face it, most people can't
spell. Try to target for the masses when
you pick your name. Think of everyone
having a 7th grade education. Make it short,
try for a two or three word domain. When
possible, name your company the same as
your domain name. Whether you actually
add .com to your company's name makes
little difference.
Use
keywords in your domain. Try services
like http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/, https://adwords.google.com/select/tools.html, and wordtracker.com to see what
people are searching for, in BIG NUMBERS,
related to your subject.
Don't
use numbers or hyphens. These are easily
overlooked or forgotten when people type
in your domain. Unless you're using a
stand out combination like 911alert or
123homerepair, don't go numeric. If you
use hyphens, then every time you tell
someone your domain, you have to say
"it's blah-blah-blah.com - with the
hyphens". This is not impressive,
and you risk losing traffic to
blahblahblah.com. You're asking your
potential customers to work harder, to
remember tedious details about your name.
Simplicity is important, because you want
them to find you. You're building a brand
here.
Don't
buy any other extension except a
".com" This is the best branded
domain extension, highly known and
trusted. Any other extension is
practically worthless, in my book. In
addition to being first in the minds of
the public, remember also that most
people trying to find a company will put
a com after that company's name in their
browser. It's second nature to most of
us. A .org can bring attention for non
profits, but even most of those companies
will try to purchase a .com as well.
Avoid
running names together that end in a
vowel and begin in a vowel. EXAMPLE:
freeebook.com Also try to avoid having
the second word start with the same
letter as the last letter of the last
word. These combinations can look weird,
and are often likely to be misread or
simply forgotten. By avoiding these two
combinations, along with numbers and
hyphens, we make sure our words (and our
brand) will stand out.
EXAMPLE:
WebmasterNow.com
Good For
Starting Sentences, Not Domains
Avoid
starting your name with THE, or A, if
being used as the word A. EXAMPLE
asimplehome.com - "a" is likely
to be forgotten. While it is true that
directory listings usually list
alphabetically, search engines do not.
If you
can come up with a catchy name starting
with "a", by all means, do so.
You may find yourself first in the yellow
page listings. Have a look there first,
and see what the competition looks like.
What are their names, how do they rank?
Now,
here's where it gets interesting. You'll
see that names starting with numbers get
displayed first (for non paid listings).
So the big question becomes, is yours the
type of product or service that will do
well from yellow page traffic? You must
carefully weigh this against overall
branding of your company.
You
could of course, have more than one
domain, and more than one brand for your
company, but be careful about promoting
the same sites with different names to
the same search engines. You could find
yourself banned from those search engines
altogether.
Brand
New?
Don't
pick your name as your domain name,
unless you're famous. Names aren't
keywords (won't help your search engine
rankings), and usually easily forgotten.
Unless you've built a big brand around
your name already, stick to a good key
phrase! It is much easier to brand.
Who's
who, and is my name taken?
To
search available domains, and to find out
who owns registered ones, use the whois
function at http://www.internic.net. If you come
across a registered domain, it will show
you where it was registered. The next
step to detecting the identity of the
actual owner, is to visit the registrar
(this is where the domain was registered)
site listed, and use their whois search.
This should provide you with name,
address, phone number and email of the
rightful owner. Unfortunately, this
information is not always available, but
it is most of the time.
A Common
Myth Equals Missed Opportunities
All the
great domains are taken. Hogwash! The
dirty little secret is, thousands of
great domains expire every day! Here's a
handy resource for finding great expired
and expiring domains - http://deleteddomains.com - I've found
some real gems here, like
webbootcamp.com, webmastertoolset.com,
customoilpainting.com and
customoilpaintings.com - all formerly
owned and let go, just to name a few.
When
applicable, do try to get the singular
and plural versions of your domain like
we just saw with customoilpainting(s).
When one could be easily be mistaken for
the other, it helps to be covered this
way. You're also protecting your brand.
Another
expiring domain service to check out is snapcheck.com. They have some
interesting statistics for expiring
domains, such as google page rank and
yahoo and dmoz listed domains. Bear in
mind that any "perceived value"
on a domain put there by a search engine
listing or page rank is inherently
fleeting. That's because the content that
was responsible for that listing is now
gone, and it is simply a matter of time
before the search engine's spiders crawl
the site again, and re-evaluate it's
content. In other words, the search
engine ranking is very likely going to
disappear soon, unless you quickly
repopulate the site with compelling
content, worthy of the rank the original
site had.
Roads To
Nowhere, No Stops Ahead
One
tasty bonus that accompanies a popular
site is link popularity. This is how many
other websites link to the domain in
question. Think of a link as a road into
your website. Quite often, webmasters do
not update their links when the site
they're linking to changes or disappears
altogether. So if you find an expired (or
soon to be expired) domain with high link
popularity (many links to the domain), it
may well stay that way for some time to
come.
Case in
point: special-report-network.net was
once a very successful ad network run by
online marketing guru Allen Says. For
reasons unknown, he shut down the site
and let the domain expire. The domain had
over 14,000 links pointing to it! The
weird part is, it still does! Want proof?
Go to alltheweb.com and search for
"link:http://www.special-report-network.net",
without the quotation marks. This will
show all the sites linking to it. The
domain got snatched up by Ultimate
Search, a hong kong company that
registers thousands of domains, and makes
money from paid search results. The site
has nothing to do with the original ad
network site that Allen built and made
successful, yet the links remain, and
links equal traffic.
Bear in
mind not all links are created equal.
Link farms (A.K.A. FFA or "free for
all" links pages), and seldom
visited by real people. Instead,
automated programs add people's URLs when
they submit to a mass submission service,
hoping to generate big traffic. Instead,
all they get is a bunch of spam, which
they've agreed to receive, in order for
using the service.
How can
I snag that expiring hottie?
When you
find a name that is pending deletion (the
owner hasn't renewed it), the next step
is to try to secure it, the moment it
becomes available. Strangely, domains do
not fall back into the pool of
availability the day they expire. It can
take up to 60 days or more in some cases
for them to "drop", and the
times are not announced. Thankfully,
there are automated services to perform
this task for us, such as Namewinner.com, Snapnames.com, Expirefish.com, and Pool.com. Prices vary,
and none can guarantee success.
Namewinner
lets users bid against each other for
expiring domains and only the winner
pays, while Snapnames and Expirefish are
first come, first served, meaning only
one user has a shot at grabbing a
particular domain. Snapnames also has the
most registrar partners, (including
Network Solutions), which may give them
an edge for securing expiring domains
that are currently registered with their
partners. They also have the highest
price tag, and you pay whether or not
they secure your name. Pool.com is a newcomer
that seems to rival the services of
Snapnames, with better prices.
One more
method you might try, is going directly
to the current owner. Let's say your
desired dropping domain is already
"back ordered" on Snapnames.com, and Expirefish.com. Now you can
still bid for it at Namewinner.com, and Pool.com, but you feel
the odds are against you. If you're
really hot on the name, and willing to
pay a premium, you may be able to bypass
the solutions above, simply by cutting a
deal with the current owner.
This can
be a bit risky however, because once the
owner realizes your interest, they may
decide to ask for a unreasonable sum of
money, or simply see value in the domain
again (generated from your interest), and
renew it as an investment. Assuming you
can make a deal, you may want to suggest
using escrow.com, which
eliminates the possibility of fraud for
both of you. The owner will need to renew
the domain before they can transfer it to
you.
The
Website Graveyard - Visit Those Spooky
Remains!
Once
you've found a deleted or soon to be
deleted domain you fancy, you might want
to take a trip into the past, to see what
that site used to be! Now bear in mind
most domains that are registered are
never developed, so there may be nothing
at all to see. But for those domains with
a tangible history, we can often peek at
their ghost, courtesy of the wayback
machine at http://www.archive.org.
One
Owner, Driven Only On Sundays
Another
way to check the history of a domain, is
simply to search for it. Try searching
google, and groups.google.com, to see what
people may have said about the site. You
may think twice about purchasing a domain
with a sketchy history.
Speculators
Beware!
Don't go
overboard and buy every known extension
for your brand - (.net, .org, .biz,
.info, etc.). Big corporations like
google can afford to buy all the country
domains. When you're starting out,
remember, domain fees are yearly, and you
need to consider the lifelong cost of
each domain. For most people, one domain
is just fine.
You may
think snatching up good domains and
reselling them would be a lucrative
business. The problem is, finding a buyer
is not easy. In fact, that's an
understatement.
Don't
register domains containing trademarks.
You will likely here from that company's
legal department if you do, and will be
forced to relinquish the name by The
World Intellectual Property Organization
(WIPO), or a lawsuit, or both.
Who's in
charge?
Icann
(The Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers) oversees the domain
registration business. Their URL is http://www.icann.org. If you ever have
trouble with your registrar, it may be
worth reporting to Icann.
Case in
point: A client of mine tried to switch
his domain to another registrar (at my
suggestion), to get added free features
(free URL forwarding), and save money.
His current registrar denied the
transfer, and tried to charge him a fee
for leaving! Once we threatened to take
up the matter with Icann, and publicly
expose them at Icann's forum
(http://forum.icann.org/regxfer), they
immediately backed down, and released the
domain.
If you
believe someone has registered a domain
that infringes on your trademark (or has
infringed on your intellectual property),
the authority to see is The World
Intellectual Property Organization
(WIPO), at http://wipo.org
Brand
Awareness
Capitalize
each word of your domain in your sig
files and letterhead, and anywhere else
you advertise your domain. It helps your
brand stand out.
EXAMPLE:
http://www.WebBootCamp.com looks better
than http://www.webbootcamp.com
Also,
only add in http://www. when you're
creating links back to your site (i.e.,
email, websites, and online forms). In
all your offline advertising, such as
signs, business cards and letterhead, you
should definitely skip http://www. and
just use "YourDomain.com". You
only have a second or two of people's
attention when they see your URL, so make
it count. Brand that name! Just make sure
your web host has your site set up to
show without WWW. Most sites are
correctly set up to display when a person
types in "YourDomain.com", or
"www.YourDomain.com" but a
handful, maybe 10% or so will show page
not found, if you skip "www".
That could be devastating, so check with
your host, and demand that your site come
up either way!
Ready To
Buy Your .com?
Don't
overpay! I'm still surprised that many
people don't know they can buy domains
for under $10 these days. Shop around.
Currently I recommend http://www.TOSDomains.net. They offer a lot
of extras like URL and email forwarding,
free.
Keep
Your Registration Current!
Don't
let your domain expire! You cannot afford
to be even a day late in payment. If it
falls into the redemption period, you may
find yourself high jacked by your
registrar for an outrageous renewal fee.
See this illuminating article for more
about the redemption period -
"Domain Redemption Period Farce
Exposed!" here: http://www.sitepoint.com/article/1034. If your expired
domain falls back into the available
pool, it may be registered by anyone, and
you may have little recourse trying to
recover it.
The
easiest way to ensure you are sent
renewal notices for your domain is to
keep your email contact current for your
domain. Perhaps the most common reason
for people losing their domains, is
simply that they switch ISPs, and
subsequently, their email address
changes, and they forget to update that
information with their domain registrar.
If you
own a lot of domains, keeping up with
administration can be tedious. One trick
I rely on, is to use one domain for my
primary business email address, and on
that registration "admin"
contact, I use my ISP email. For all my
other domain registrations, I use my
primary business email address (based on
my primary domain, which I will never let
go). Now, if I should switch ISPs, all I
need to concern myself with is changing
that one domain record, to reflect my new
ISP email. All my other domain records
have that primary domain email as the
admin contact, so as long as I keep the
one record current (and keep the email
account active), all will be current, and
all domain renewal notices will be sent
to me.
In the
end, it's not so much about the name, as
it is what you make of it. Just look at
all the big successful internet companies
out there with strange names! Yahoo!
To learn
how to set up your domain to point to
your hosting account, I recommend the
reading materials in Web Boot Camp, an
all inclusive "how to" guide
for web business. Get web savvy today! http://www.WebBootCamp.com/r.cgi?main
Copyright
2004 Jim Symonds
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