Choosing a Domain Name Part 3
We’re here to wrap it up with our final installment of our Choosing a Domain Name series. As always, we like to get into the meat of the subject rather quickly. So, here are more tips!
Stick with .com for businesses and .org for non-profit organizations – Usually people will type in the .com extension, so don’t go getting a .net extension if you don’t have the .com extension. For example, if your website is widgets.net, and you tell your friends or possible customers the name of your site, chance are that they will go to widgets.com. If the owners of widgets.com happen to be your competitor, you’ve just lost some business. Non-profits are synonomous with having a .org extension. You might ask, “But what if I have a personal website?” Then go with the .com extension.
Get a unique, fun, and easy to spell name – Think about YouTube.com, Vimeo.com, and Google.com. These names are easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and easy to remember. What’s in a name? Everything.
Register your domain name for multiple years – Doing this will tell the search engines that you mean business and you’re not just a fly by night company who spams folks. You’re in it for the long haul, aren’t you?
Avoid trademark issues – You don’t want to come up with just the perfect domain name only to find out that you have to give it up because somebody has already trademarked their company name. Before making the purchase, you can do a search to see if anybody has trademarked your name here.