If you have decided by now to get your own domain name but have no idea what to choose, here are some tips for you. There are also a few things that you will want to take note of when choosing your domain name as this will play a small part in affecting your SEO strategy which will in turn affect your ranking in search engines.
Domain Selection Strategies
You can select your domain names based on your company name, the brand of your product or even your own name. (*Tip: Very often, people buy their own name for domains and link it to their blogs). You can also choose a domain name based on the theme or purpose of your website.
By now, you probably will already have encountered that the domain names that you had intended to buy is not available. To work around this problem, you can use hyphens/ dashes or by adding a “s” behind the word. For example, if you have intended to get the domain name www.photographytip.com but find that it is taken, you can try for www.photography-tip.com or www.photography-tips.com or www.photographytips.com.
You can even make use of misspellings (especially if the name is commonly misspelled, for e.g. accomodation instead of accommodation) for your domain name.
Types of Domains
There are basically 2 main levels of domains – the top level domain and the country level domains. The top level domains will include:
· .com
· .net
· .info
· .biz
· .ws
The country level domains will include:
· .sg
· .com.sg
Qualities of Good Domain Names
In choosing your domain name, you may want to take note of the following points –
Domain names should be:
· Short and catchy
· Easy to remember
· Easy to spell
· Easy to pronounce
If you still have not managed to find an available domain name for yourself, you can make use of domain modifiers by adding prefixes and suffixes. Below are 2 tables of prefixes and suffixes.
|
1
|
best
|
classified
|
complete
|
|
covert
|
definitive
|
direct
|
excellent
|
|
exclusive
|
express
|
fast
|
free
|
|
fresh
|
hot
|
immediate
|
innovative
|
|
instant
|
key
|
killer
|
max
|
|
my
|
online
|
power
|
quick
|
|
rapid
|
secret
|
select
|
stealth
|
|
straight
|
top
|
ultimate
|
web
|
|
advice
|
bank
|
basics
|
center
|
|
channel
|
consultant
|
directory
|
enterprise
|
|
essentials
|
expert
|
facts
|
guide
|
|
guru
|
ideas
|
index
|
info
|
|
information
|
inside
|
leader
|
leads
|
|
list
|
listing
|
news
|
online
|
|
onlineguide
|
point
|
power
|
professional
|
|
resources
|
search
|
secrets
|
solutions
|
|
specialist
|
store
|
strategies
|
success
|
|
template
|
templates
|
tips
|
tool
|
|
toolkit
|
tools
|
whiz
|
wiz
|
Going back to our earlier example of www.photographytips.com, you can add a prefix to this domain name to get: www.freephotographytips.com. Similarly, you can add a suffix to your domain to get: www.photographytipsonline.com. This tip should help you to generate many combinations and you should be able to find one that you like.
Case Example: How To Choose A Domain Name For A Web Hosting Provider
Selected Prefix – 1
Keyword – hosting
Selected Suffix – solutions
Top-level Domain – .com
Domain Name – 1hostingsolutions.com
