How to Find a Great Domain Name, With a Twist


Hello all,

Just wanted to touch on domains right here. Are you picking the right domain for your own AdSense site/ebook/membership site/product, etc? If not, you know you may be in severe trouble!

A domain is usually among the first things people pick when they are creating a site or product. This is WRONG! Stop doing the work already! Just because you thought of a great domain which is available, doesn't mean that someone else has the very same idea and they are just waiting to remove it from under you.

The domain is the initial thing people see about your site. It is the hyperlink they click on, type in, digg, or stumbleupon. So ensure that you give it a little love.

Some things you should always consider with regards to picking the right domain are:

* Keyword wealthy domains
* Readability
* Potential Traffic

Your domain must always contain your main keyword for your site. AdSense sites and content driven sites should make use of this. If your site is about hiking backpacks, your domain ought to be hikingbackpacks.com.

If you're going for branding, make sure to incorporate branding in your domain as well. If people are searching for you via your brand, you need to make certain they can find everything about you.

If your own brand is Pepsi, you would have pepsi.com. You could also enforce your brand with pepsicommercials.com which has your brand as well as the focal part of your site in the URL. And it is easy to remember.

One more thing you need is readability. If your domain is actually: mycooldomainthatisreallyhardtoread.com, no one is going to be able to decipher that. On the flip side, you can use hyphens, but that will make your customers have a really hard time typing your domain. Imagine trying to tell someone over the phone "type m y 'hyphen' c o o l hyphen...". Not so effective.

Make your domain short an punchy. Such as my domain is "BAM! ". Get a domain that's as short as possible. I don't care in case your product is "Shortening Really Long URL's For Much better Use On Twitter", it shouldn't be your cool domain name. Your domain needs to be something more such as tweetsnip.com or twitsnip.com. 1 to 3 syllables is best.

Ready for the Twist? Let's Go...

The last thing that you can do is see the potential traffic your domain will get. Not everyone knows about this. ICANN (don't be worried about what that means) has a "Create Grace Period" holding domains for 5 days before you decide to are locked into having the domain for 1-5 many years. Think of it as a car's 72 purchaser's remorse rule.

If you are purchasing a domain available, you can do some traffic analysis before you move forward with your domain. If you see it gets a respectable amount of traffic on it's own for whatever cause, and that is one of your traffic methods, then you are good. If not, it is actually ok, but keep it in mind in case you change the mind about the domain before the grace period has ended.

All in all, don't jump into the site selecting process. Just like a great headline, it takes time to obtain the perfect one.

Until next time.