Domain Name

Once you've established the theme of your site, you need to choose your domain name, and check whether it is available. This is a very important decision and shouldn't be taken lightly, as a bad domain name can have a negative effect on the future profitability of your site.

There are many factors you need to consider when you choose a domain name, which I have listed below:

1. Keep it as simple, and as short as possible.

This almost goes without saying as it's clearly easier to remember one or two word domain names than a mixture of numbers and letters. If you do use one or two words make sure they are words that are easily spelt, otherwise again people are likely to visit another site other than yours.

2. Try and include your main keyword(s) in your domain name.

This will increase your search engine ranking for that keyword or keywords. A really perfect domain name would be one that includes your main keyword(s), and perfectly describes the content of your site.

3. Avoid hyphens if you can.

Some people will disagree with me here, but I would recommend not having any hyphens in your name. This is because again by doing so, you're only increasing the chances that people will enter the address of your site incorrectly when they enter it into the browser. However I wouldn't rule them out completely as there may be an excellent domain name available that uses a hyphen to connect your two main keywords for example.

4. Do not include trademarks in your domain name.

The last thing you need is to go to the time and effort of building and promoting your site, only to get into trouble later on when the company who's trademark you are using finds out about your site, and demands that you change the name, or even takes legal action against you. This is very important to remember.

5. If you can get a dot-com.

When people refer to internet companies they still refer to them as dot-com's, and it is, in my opinion, still the most respected suffix to have. I know I personally will give more credence, when surfing the net, to sites that end in .com than others such as .info or .org for example.

6. If you have a branded off-line company use that name.

This can be extremely powerful if you already have an established business, and you are serious about building a major presence on the internet. Alternatively you could of course make up a catchy one-word name for your business, and follow many of the internet giants such as Google, Ebay, Amazon, Yahoo, etc, who have done this successfully.

 
As regards checking the availability of any potential domain names you may be interested in, then I recommend Domainsbot. They will instantly find expired, expiring, and available domain names relating to your search criteria.