Website Domains – What’s in a Name?

Finding a good domain for your site is probably the most important step in creating a new website.  You need a strong name.  Here are some tips and tools to help you out.

If you are starting a blog, perhaps the best domain name for it is your name, first and last, followed by a dot com. It really depends on what you want to do with your site. Are you promoting yourself, your work, your service or your portfolio? In any of these cases, it makes sense to use your name in your domain.

You may run into a problem, however. It is very possible that your name will not be available for purchase because someone else got to it first and now owns it. What do you do in this case? You can search for different combinations of your name and last name. If your name is Steve Andrew Smith but SteveSmith.com is taken, consider SteveASmith.com or SteveAndrewSmith.com. If all of these are taken, the next step is to see if you can get any of these addresses as a .net domain.

Having a domain name that ends in dot com (.com) is the most popular and well-known option for people who own websites, but there really is nothing wrong with a dot net (.net) name. People won’t really notice the difference and it doesn’t matter in terms of having search engine traffic sent to your blog or anything like that.

In other words, a domain name that isn’t a dot com won’t hurt you. But, that being said, get one if you can.

There are quite a few free tools you can use online to help you find a great domain. The following are a couple that should help you find the right domain name (or URL) for your site. You may be wondering why these tools are free to use. They’re free because if you decide to purchase domains through the owners’ affiliate links, they earn a few dollars. Like many things on the Internet, these sites are often monetized with affiliate links.

Here are three domain tools you can use to help find your diamond in the rough.

Another quick tip about domain names: it can be very useful to use keywords associated with your niche in the name of your site. This is good for a few reasons: it lets people know what your site is about, gains you interested readers, and may help with your search engine rankings. Another added benefit is that people will link to you using your chosen keywords, which will help you climb up the search engine rankings and attract more website traffic.

In the middle of creating a list of domain tools, I found a very comparable (or probably better list) at Six Revisions blog.  Check out some of the tools available.  I have found that people find one or two tools and stick with them.  Just like any other applications, websites, or programs on the internet, you can confuse the heck out of yourself by over-searching and inundating yourself with tools.  Good luck.

If you have any questions about choosing a good domain, please leave a comment and I will let you know my thoughts.  Anyone else can chime in with ideas as well.  This is an open forum, so if you are looking for a new domain name, leave your 2 cents.