How to choose a good domain name for your web site.

2. DECIDING ON A DOMAIN NAME

A good domain name is catchy and easy to remember. It's also usually relevant to the topic of your website. For example, if your site is about herb gardens, a name like “superherbs.com” would be great. However, a name like “herbs1978f.com” would not.

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A. RESTRICTIONS

There are a number of restrictions placed on domain names. These include:

Domain names can be made up of letters, numbers, and dashes. The name can't begin with a dash.
You can’t include special characters like spaces, apostrophes, periods, commas or ! @ # $ % ^ & or *.
The name should not infringe on someone else's registered trademark.

Capitalization doesn't matter. It all looks lower-case to the computer even if you type the domain name all upper-case into the browser. To lessen the chance of people making typos when they type your site's domain name into their browser, the name should ideally be less than ten letters long, and definitely less than fifteen. This will also make the name easier to remember.

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B. DASHES

Should you use dashes in your domain name? Some search engines are giving slightly higher rankings to domain names when the topic of the website is used in the name.

Search engines see dashes as spaces. For example, pretty-blue-flowers.com gets brownie points for a search for "pretty blue flowers". If this website had been named prettyblueflowers.com it would get no brownie points since that name is all one long blob rather than three words separated by dashes.

However, it's easier to say "my website is at pretty blue flowers dot com" than it is to say "my website is at pretty dash blue dash flowers dot com".

It's a trade-off. Use dashes and you get a little search ranking bonus in some search engines (but not Google which is the most important one). Don't use dashes and your domain name is easier to say. It's up to you to decide which is more important to you.

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C. EXAMPLES

For a flowershop in Los Angeles…

GOOD: la-flowers.com OR losangelesflorist.com
BAD: thebestflowersinlosangeles.com

Why? The good ones are memorable and relevant. The bad one is way too long and increases chances of people misspelling or not remembering it right.

For a website about bonsai trees…

GOOD: bonsai-trees.com or bonsaitree.com
BAD: 77reasonstoplanttrees.com

Why? The good ones are easier to remember. The bad one is long and not really about bonsais.

For a law firm in Ottumwa, Iowa…

GOOD: ottumwalaw.com or IA-law.com
BAD: bakerolsenhartridgehamiltonandlake.com

Why? Shorter is better. Longer is not.

What about a name like “amazon.com” for a bookstore, or “ebay.com” for an auction house? They’re catchy and memorable, but not especially relevant. Sometimes, catchy and memorable trump relevant. This is especially true for shorter domain names and company names. (And I hope crunch42.com fits into this category.)

Why not hire the author of this article for your next web site project?

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