Finding the Perfect Domain Name

Brainstorming for the perfect domain can be quite a troublesome task, mainly because there are 100,000,000 domains already taken; the best ones were bought years ago. But using the following steps you can still find a great domain for your next website idea.

Do you have a budget of $10 or $10,000?

If your budget is $10 then you are limited to buying domains that nobody else has thought of, which can be bought immediately from a domain registrar such as GoDaddy. To find domains nobody else has thought of you will have to try many different domains because the majority of good domains have already been thought of. The best you can hope for with a $10 budget is a good domain, finding a great one is near impossible.


With a higher budget you can get a great domain, but the price of domains can be sky-high for single and even double word .com domains, for example NewlyWeds.com sold for $130,000 while FloridaGolfCarts.com sold for $565; generally the shorter the domain the more expensive it is. If you were hoping to buy Marketing.com it won’t be cheap! If you are looking to buy a great domain and have a higher budget than $10 you will need to purchase the domain privately from the owner, to find out the email address of the owner of a site just type the domain into a WhoIs tool. Otherwise you can look for great domains at a domain auction website such as Sedo.

Which TLD?

.com domains are worth between 25 and 250 times as much as the other common TLDs – net, org, biz and info, so if you can get the .com then you should. Finding a suitable .com that is not already taken is not easy so if you really want a certain name like ‘MarketingHub’ you may need to choose a different TLD. Which TLD you should use can be worked out using this simple rule: if most people will be typing your domain into the address bar then get a .com, but if most of your traffic will be from search engines the TLD doesn’t matter.

Keyworded vs. Brandable

If you expect most of your traffic to come from search engines then a keyworded domain such as www.NarutoWallpaper.biz is preferable as the keywords in the domain will help your search engine rankings, ‘Naruto Wallpaper’ is something people search for so the domain will benefit me. Something like MySpace is brandable rather than keyworded because nobody would have searched for the key phrase ‘My Space’ before MySpace became popular, you should choose a brandable domain if you expect your website idea to go big.

Hyphens or not? Numbers or not?

A single hyphen in a domain name greatly reduces the value so you should avoid them where possible. Numbers also greatly reduce the value of a domain unless they have a specific purpose such as in www.24hours.com or www.mp3.com, www.marketing1.com is an example of a bad number.

Short or Long?

Shorter is generally best but short domains are the rarest, if you want to get a domain for $10 you should be looking for 2 or 3 word phrases if you want a keyworded domain or you can create your own word 6+ characters long.

Conclusion

If you consider all of these points you shouldn’t have much trouble finding a good domain, and if you have a higher budget you should be able to get a great one.