5 Rules For Choosing A Memorable Domain Name

"Choose a good domain name for your store. Having your own domain rather than using the subdomain supplied with your store adds credibility and professionalism. Choosing a good name can also increase visitors to your store. When I registered DrChristophersHerbs.com I saw an increase in sales due to the keyword density of the name itself. In fact, 66.74% of my traffic comes from search engines, most of them searching for “dr christophers herbs” which corresponds with my domain name."

With so many websites out there, you often need to be creative to find a domain name that isn’t already taken. Smashing Magazine wrote a great article to do just that and we have highlighted some key points.

5 Tips on Creating a Domain Name

 

1. The essentials: Be short, catchy and memorable! You should also make your name easy to pronounce and spell.

2. The unspoken rules: Avoid something too similar to competing domain names and make sure not to violate someone else’s trademark.

3. ”.COM” – The ”.com” is the most popular top-level domain and it can be hard to find one that is available. In most cases, you should favor a ”.com” however if you are planning to sell in a specific country only you should consider a country specific domain such as “co.uk” for the United Kingdom.

4. Discoverable vs. Brandable: What’s your strategy? Solely relying on traffic from search engines? Then you should use real words and phrases like TopTvMounts.com that people are searching for to increase your search ranking. If your marketing focus is on paid search listing, banner ads and buzz building, you should come up with a brandable name like Insiders1.com that people will remember.

5. Be creative: Most single-word domains are taken and you might need to create your own word. Try compounding two whole words (YouTube), using a phrase (Six Apart), blending parts of two words together (Microsoft), tweaking a word (Flickr), affixing a word with a prefix or a suffix, or making up a completely unique name (Odeo).

Tools to Help you Brainstorm Names

• NameStation – Generates a list of available domains based on a submitted word.
• Domaintyper – Checks domain name availability instantly.
• Domain Pigeon – See what others are looking to register as a source of inspiration.
• Domainr – Type a work and it will find “domain hacks”.

Most likely you will not get your first pick; don’t let that discourage you. You will find a great domain name to represent your store.

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