Choosing Domain Name

Domain name is a very important aspect of your website, just like your name is an important aspect of your life and self esteem. Once settled, domain name can be very difficult and expensive to change because:

• Website users and clients accustomed the old one.
• Campaigns running are connecting to the old domain.

Search engine optimization - usually involves many hours of submitting your URl to various indexes and search engines. Once you change URL you must start almost from zero.

Recreating all the incoming links to your new domain
Picking domain resembles picking location for your business. Just as you will not open a luxurious jewelry boutique in the middle of a slum , you don't want your business domain carry a name like shop-for-great-jewellery.com.

If we examine the most popular websites in the net , we won't find many with domain of more than 8 character because domain must be accessible. Accessibility is better if :

• A domain is as short as possible.
• Domain resembles a generic word.
• Domain does not contain characters like "-" and " _" .
• Domain does not contains complex word/number combination like open0698.com.
• Domain is easy to spell. For example if i told you someone go to domain site123.com most of the chances he would be able to spell it correct.
• Domain doesn't resemble other website domain.

Picking a suffix is also an strategic decision. If you refer world-wide, you better buy .com domain because it is the most popular domain suffix in the world. Domains with .net are far less popular therefore you better compromise on a name but not on a suffix. If you represent non profit organization you may considers .org.

If you have a local business you better prefer local domain, like .co.uk . These domains are little more expensive but worth the money because local search engines prefer them over .com and because it gives you a better branding in your country. Large businesses that refer to many countries should consider buying multiple local domains instead of one multi language .com domain. Nevertheless, if you bought a local domain, you should consider buying .com too , in order to prevent leakage to another website.

Remember that good domain names are being taken very quickly; therefore you better precede and purchase yourself a good domain name while it is available.

Source : www.articlecircle.com/internet/e-business/choosing-domain-name.html