How To Select A Good Domain Name

If you want to launch a new website, one of the most important first decisions you make will be what is the website going to be called.

This process nearly always follows the same path: you think of a name you like, you ask people you know about it and they say its great to, you go to register the domain name, you realise someone else already has it registered and so you start all over again.

With the massive success of the internet, and the ease with which any domain can be registered by anybody, whether they intend to use it or not, is that when a legitimate website owner who wants to register a domain for a new project, invariably finds it has already been taken, and in the majority of cases by someone who is not using it for any website themselves, they just hope someone will want it bad enough that they will pay big money to buy it from them.

This situation of course leaves genuine people looking to start a new website with a real challenge, i.e. deciding on a name where the matching domain name is actually available.

You can often get the name you really want, but you will probably need to pay the current owner a large sum of money to get it off their hands.

Assuming purchasing the perfect name is not possible, then this is where you need to get creative!

There are lots of great ways to find a good unregistered domain, clearly in many instances most people would like the .com version of their chosen domain name, but if this is not possible the are many other possiblities such as .net for example.

Also, if your product or service is aimed at a specific country, then you may be able to get your chosen name with the relevant country extension, such as a .co.uk, or .in for example.

If none of these options are available to you then you can try other ways, such as using a hyphen in the domain name, its not ideal but may allow you to use the words and phrases you want to use rather then seeking alternatives.

If you do find that you have no option other then think of a new name, then you will probably need to make it at least two words long, and more likely three. Pretty much all single word domain names in the popular extension have already been registered, and very many two word domain names have also been taken. You will need to think of good names consisting of two or three words, this coupled with different domain extensions, or the use of a hyphen will normally produce a result that is acceptable, and more importantly, available!

Happy hunting!

By: Phil Lister

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